


New Bloom

by TelepathicTeaTime



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Jarco - Freeform, Love Letters, Reconciliation, well technically exes to friends to lovers again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27137458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TelepathicTeaTime/pseuds/TelepathicTeaTime
Summary: Marco and Jackie's relationship ended with the flutter of a cape and a wilted bouquet of flowers, and that should've been the end of things...But when Marco sends Jackie a postcard from Mewni with a stack of magical stamps and a hopeful plea to write him back, is it possible for their love to bloom anew once more?
Relationships: Marco Diaz & Jackie Lynn Thomas, Marco Diaz/Jackie Lynn Thomas
Comments: 29
Kudos: 27





	1. Til The Last Petal Falls

Jackie Lynn Thomas had never been gifted a bouquet in her life. Her dad would sometimes pluck her a flower or two when he was out working in his garden, tiny little things that’d never blossom into the vegetables he wanted, but they’d usually be wilted in the time it took them to leave his soil stained fingers to meet her calloused palms.

The cute boy at skate camp had also once tucked a limp dandelion behind her ear while she waited for her turn on the ramp, but the stem had gotten crushed between her head and helmet and dribbled milk down her neck, where it mingled sticky and gross with all of her sweat.

Even with her lack of bouquet-receiving experience, Jackie knew that a single bloom or two didn’t really count anyways. The bright and lush collection of blooms that Marco had brought her this afternoon, though, bursting with color and fragrance?

Now that was a stellar bouquet!

She wasn’t that high maintenance of a girl, never had been. She had never expected Marco to buy her such gifts, but...she was a bit of a hidden romantic at heart, and had been so stoked to get them. She really had been.

‘ _ My first bouquet, from my first boyfriend… Pretty cooool!’  _ She’d silently cheered as she quickly arranged them in a vase atop her writing desk, not wanting to keep Marco waiting downstairs any longer than necessary.

After she was certain they wouldn’t be tipping over and had sprinkled some of the flower food they’d come with into the water, she had allowed herself one quiet moment just to admire them, really appreciate the kindness Marco had put into the gesture of presenting them to her...with the promise of taking her on a perfect date no less! Which she was pretty eager to go on now. Smiling gently at the flowers, she had even given them a gentle pat good-bye before rushing out of her room to rejoin his side.

The pier awaited!

/////

The difference a single day could make. This morning she had been so happy for the day ahead of her, so absolutely stoked for her date with Marco...but now-

Her desk was sprinkled with a few glittering droplets of water, the vase on her desk now empty. The flowers who’d known the vase as home for only a day were clenched tightly in her hands, which she willed not to tremble, as she dangled them over what was going to be their new,  _ new home-  _

The trash bin. 

There was no use in holding on so tightly to something that was already dead, right? Isn’t that why she had left Marco at the pier, effectively making their perfect date their last? His heart was no longer here with her, but with his best friend dimensions away on an alien planet. If she hadn’t let him go right then and there, they only would have suffered more later on…

The sharp ache in her heart argued that she could suffer just as much  _ right now.  _

So the flowers had to go too. Marco had been lying to her then when he’d given them to her, claiming the cape and all the emotional baggage and confused feelings for a certain alien princess had finally been abandoned-only for it to be hidden right under her nose, and under his clothes, all along. 

They really hadn’t meant anything at all.

Before she could question if she was talking about just the flowers or her and Marco’s entire relationship, she violently shook her head, hoping the bad vibes would come tumbling out of her brain and into the trash where they belonged.

Everything was cool, everything would be fine.  _ She  _ would be fine. Definitely not today... but eventually.

The same could not be said for the flowers, though, right? They’d only look nice for a couple of days, maybe a week tops, before they’d begin to wither and shed their petals all over her desk, just another reminder that they’d already been dead when she got them, a metaphor she didn’t want to have to look at every day until it was a more appropriate time to toss them.

The time to get rid of them was  _ right now. _

That’s what Jackie had told herself, but she had been standing over the trash can for ten minutes now, though she didn’t know why she was hesitating. It should’ve only taken her a second to toss them out, it would have only _hurt_ her for a second if she had just chucked them and been done with it.

“C’mon, really?” She chided herself, willing her fingers to release their grip and just let the flowers crash into the garbage where they belonged. “It’s gonna be like ripping off a band-aid, that’s all. Hurts for a second then it’s done! You’re used to that feeling by now, right?”

Years of skateboarding had instilled in Jackie the knowledge that there was no time to hesitate, that even a single second wasted could lead to a major wipe out. Time moved differently on a board like that. There was no time for fear, or to hold back. You could only ever keep rolling forwards.

“And for you, little flower dudes,” Jackie declared to the blossoms, trying to find her resolve, “You gotta roll on into the trash…. _ Ugh, sorry… _ That wasn’t cool at all. _ ” _

Their stems were still wet from where they’d been soaking in their vase, and dripped like tears onto the tops of her feet, as if they were pleading desperately with her over their abrupt eviction,  _ ‘No, not the trash! Please, Jackie Lynn, don’t just throw us away!’ _

She sighed, and gave the bouquet a slight shake, as if to silence their imaginary weeping. “Look, I don’t really  _ want  _ to throw you away, but like, I totally have to, okay? I broke up with Marco, and you’re a gift from Marco, and I don’t wanna have to think about Marco right now, alright?”

She crinkled up her freckled nose in frustration. Wow, for not wanting to think about the dude, she sure could find a way to say his name an awful lot...

And then Jackie glanced up and saw herself in the mirror attached to her vanity, still wearing her blue ocean wave dress, talking, a _ctually talking,_ to the flowers Marco had surprised her with...and bouquet still in hand, she wandered over to inspect her reflection a little closer.

She had a bit of helmet hair going on, which being a sight she was beyond familiar with, made no attempt to fix. She’d also tanned a bit after spending the day out on the boardwalk with Marco, her skin a little more golden than it had been in the morning. And her eyes…

Jackie had always been told that she had the most beautiful eyes, from her family and friends to strangers alike. They were the same color as the sea on a bright and sunny day, almost more green than blue, and they sparkled like waves catching the light. And right now...they were filled with grief. She had played it so cool, so mature, letting Marco go so that he could go find his happiness elsewhere, but his words when he had caught her hands to stop her from leaving…

_ “Jackie, you’re my best friend.” _

How could he have said something so obviously untrue? Why did he have to throw that last bit of salt into the wound? It stung like gravel in a scraped knee, like a knife to her guts...like being betrayed by the one person you swore you could believe in.

How could someone as sweet and kind as Marco be so... _ cruel? _

Jackie watched as her features in the mirror began to blur and warp, her vision becoming that of a fish eye lens with pent up emotions. Now that she was alone at home, she let the tears flow freely, letting them roll down her face fat and hot to drip down her chin and splash on the petals in her grasp.

Though she always tried her best to see the best in things, and to keep calm with a smile even when things got intense, Jackie also knew that it was totally okay to  _ not  _ be okay. Sometimes the best way to work through even the lamest of feelings was to just feel them for a bit, no matter how big of a bummer it was. So she let herself cry, and then she let herself sob, until she was clutching the bouquet tight to her chest in an attempt to squeeze her jigsaw heart back into a singular piece.

This entire situation wasn’t just a bummer...It totally sucked!

By the time Jackie’s crying had begun to subside, her gasps dying down to quiet little hiccups and her eyes not nearly as pretty as usual all puffed up and red, she found that at some point during her breakdown she had slid down to the floor, the bouquet squished between her knees and her chest. The flowers, as if weeping right alongside her, had shed some of their petals into her lap and onto the floor, and whispered like paper confetti as Jackie began to gather them up in her hands, soft and velvety.

It was then she saw it, a little blank white card that definitely hadn’t been on the floor before. Brow quirked in curiosity, Jackie swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand before plucking it up for closer inspection.

It wasn’t blank at all. On the other side was a message from Marco, written in his neat and tidy handwriting in dark blue ink. The size of the card made his message brief, but it was still sweet nonetheless.

_ Jackie- _

_ You deserve the world, but I hope these flowers will do. _

_ -Marco _

Jackie smiled and re-read the note over a few times, tracing a fingertip over his signature, the sharp peaks of the capital ‘M’, the loop of the ‘o’. Her chest felt much lighter after her long cry, and her head a lot clearer too. As she stood with the card in hand and the flowers cradled in her arm, Jackie came to a new decision about the fate of her bouquet.

Again speaking to the flowers, Jackie congratulated them, voice still a little bit subdued from all the crying she’d done. “Okay, dudes, you lucked out! No trash can digs for you tonight.”

She plopped them back in the vase, and tried to fluff them back up the best she could from where they’d gotten crushed. “I’m gonna keep you around for awhile until you’re all flowered out, deal? And…”

She delicately leaned Marco’s note against the vase, where she could easily see it whenever she admired the flowers. “And I’m gonna keep Marco in my heart until then too. Just a  _ little  _ bit longer.”

She knew with her whole heart, even as bruised up as it was right now, that Marco was not actually cruel. In fact, he was easily one of the sweetest, nicest people she had ever been lucky enough to know, let alone call her boyfriend, and she really had meant it when she told him to stay amazing, because well…

Marco Diaz was an absolutely amazing person, and there was nothing wrong with the fact that she cared about him so much. Jackie didn’t want to just rip all her feelings for him off like a band-aid, not after all the fun they’d had together in the past year since becoming friends, the last three wonderful happy months they shared as a couple.

She might have let him go today, but honestly… she wanted to be able to miss him just a little bit longer, to really remember what they had shared, and how awesome it had been. Just because their time together had been fleeting, that didn't mean it had been any less beautiful. It was something she didn’t want to ever regret.

Jackie was going to allow herself at least that much until all the flowers were dead, each petal a reason why she cared about Marco and why she would miss him, and then, by the time the last one fell...She’d really be ready to let both things go- Her first bouquet, and her first love.

Her mind made up, Jackie brushed her fingers against the flowers, and then the card, one last time. “Cool.” And then she turned away with a gentle smile and began to get ready for bed. “Cool, cool, cool…”


	2. Unexpected Delivery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as Jackie Lynn Thomas begins to find closure over her break up and move on, the arrival of an unexpected postcard throws her mind and her heart into confusion once more.

Jackie tried to fill those last precious weeks of summer leading up to school with as much fun stuff as she could. She skated all the best skate spots in Echo Creek, including the super smooth ledges around the strip mall, the long stair rail at the library, the perfectly flat and great for cruising parking lot at the school. She didn’t need to make the trip to the skate park at all, why would she?

_ The whole world is my skate park! _

The security guards that tried to chase her down on their segways and yell at her didn’t seem to agree, but Jackie had never cared much for what they had to say, anyways. 

_ Freedom to skateboards, death to motorized segways! _

She went to the record store and bought any CD that seemed even mildly interesting to her, regardless of artist and genre, of the unimpressed sneer the clerk looked down on her with. Jackie had found it a bit harder to listen to Love Sentence as of late (she still had  _ that _ shirt, balled up tight and shoved deep into the cluttered chaos of her closet, she just didn’t have the heart to toss it out) and she needed some new tunes to jam out to. As soon as she was back in her room she would turn up the volume as high as she could stand it (as her dad would allow when he was home), loud enough to drown out her thoughts, and dance the sadness out, stomping it under her twirling feet until it was fine as dust, or sand. Speaking of-

The beach became her home away from home in those weeks as well. With her backpack loaded up snug with bottled water, some snacks, her favorite orange and teal striped towel, and whatever history book had piqued her interest that week, she’d zoom on down to the shore as early as she could, eager to snag a good spot before the visiting tourists cluttered up the whole beach with their wheeled coolers and screaming kids.

Even with the sun beating down harsh and hot upon her shoulders and head, Jackie found great peace reading under its rays, receiving the soothing breezes rolling off the sea as she would a soothing kiss, with her eyes closed and a smile on her lips. When it would get so hot she could no longer stand it, she’d simply flip her book facedown where she’d left off and go running into the water with a joyous cheer, letting the waves crash over her body and completely claim her, feeling free as she floated on her back in their foamy embrace, her hair drifting about her face and tickling her cheek.

Jackie especially loved the way the rest of the world sounded so far away with her ears submerged underwater, like it was all so very very far away…

Like Marco was. She would stare into the sky when this thought struck her (and it always did, as certain as the ebb and flow of the waves on the shore) and she would allow herself a few minutes to simply stare up not just at the sky, but to try to glimpse all that was behind it, all the other dimensions it shielded from her sight with its bright azure hue, its occasional puff of clouds. She wondered if Marco was happy out there, if he was being the best knight he could be. Did he get to wear his red hoodie underneath all his armor, wouldn’t that be pretty hot and uncomfortable? Had...had he kissed Star the way he kissed her yet?

The moment those sorts of thoughts struck her, Jackie would sink herself like a stone under the waves, bubbles popping silver-lined and quick from her nose, in an effort to drown them into silence. 

_ Nope, nuh uh, not cool! _

Eyes clenched tight, the water churning all around her, her orange shell floating just a bit above her chest with the current, she’d force herself to stay in that hazy underwater glow until the burning pain in her lungs was worse than the stabbing ache in her heart, and she’d resurface with a not so graceful gasp that always drew a few concerned stares from her fellow swimmers, her eyes rimmed red with always something more than just the sting of saltwater alone.

By the time she’d plop back down on her towel to dry in the sun, her hair dripping like gentle rain onto the heads of the characters in her books, she’d feel calm once more, all thoughts of Marco carried far out to sea where she could no longer hear them, could no longer feel them.

The only time Jackie would willingly let those feelings run their course is when she tended to the bouquet on her desk. She always did this right before bed, after her day of fun was done and over with- after she came back home from her trip to the mall with Janna, after she’d had a nice dinner with her dad and had her nightly video chat with her mom, after she came home from skating or hanging at the beach- when she could be completely alone with her thoughts.

She always tried to remember the best about her time with Marco as she cared for the flowers, the best things about him. The warmth and sincerity she could always find in both his smile and his brown eyes usually came to mind first, and Jackie would still catch herself blushing at the memory of his too sweet, too adorable face. Why had it taken her so long to notice those saucy brown eyes of his, the way they absolutely lit up whenever she was around? How could she have never noticed the way his mole dimpled up with the apple of his cheek whenever he smiled wide and bright? Had Marco really always been that cute? Had she really been so blind, so oblivious for so long?

And then Jackie would give her burning cheeks a sharp clap to bring herself back into focus, and move unto a kinder thought. Like...

Like how much he worried for her well-being whenever they found themselves in trouble together. It didn’t seem to matter if it was something as simple as falling off her skateboard together or as intense as nearly getting sucked into an interdimensional portal into the deep dark void along with their friends, he was always there to hold her hands tight and check on her like she was something very precious, something that needed to be protected, and it made her feel...well,  _ special _ . She had always been seen as such a rough and tumble kind of girl with her love of skateboarding, covered with scrapes and bruises and colorful band aids as proof that she was honing her skill, that she was always getting better at it too, learning something new with each mistake and slam she took. So people tended not to coddle her much when they saw she was hurt, even as a kid. 

_ Oh, Jackie fell and busted up her lip? Ahh, she’s a tough skater girl, she’s used to it by now. Oh look at Jackie, she just fell pretty hard didn’t she? She’s probably slammed worse, she can get up just fine on her own, no need to fuss! _

Marco had been the first one, the only one, to worry about her like that, to make sure she was okay. So it was like a fierce desire in her heart to look out for him the same way whenever he seemed down, like after the incident with the baby ducks, or when he had been twisted up in knots at the summer party. Even if all she had to offer him were some encouraging words when he felt down or some clear-headed advice when his own thoughts were clouded, if Jackie could even make him feel even like, a  _ quarter of the way  _ special and cared for the way he made her feel, ease any of the anxiety rife in his heart, she would say or do just about anything. And it made Jackie smile to know that they had each other's backs like that, like they had been a real team.

And that was just when things had been intense! When they were actually able to laugh and have fun together, dancing at concerts hand in hand or enjoying pizza nuggets, or kissing in the moonlight, soft and sweet...though their time together like that had been brief, it had been beautiful. Perfect even.

“And that’s not something to be mad about, right?” Jackie mused to herself with a gentle smile, tucking her hair behind her studded ear as she traced her finger over Marco’s message once more.

_ ‘You deserve the world.’  _ he’d said. 

To Jackie, it felt like Marco had given her the world in their months together. He had given her a world with so much to look forward to, of butterflies in her stomach and warm kisses on her lips, a whole new world she had been so excited to explore with him further. Who knows where they would’ve ended up, if only…

If only his world hadn’t left the orbit of her’s for a bigger, brighter star. 

The flowers in fresh water and fed, Jackie turned abruptly from her desk. It was time for bed, anyways. 

Tomorrow was another day.

Soon, much too soon as far as Jackie was concerned, the tomorrows of summer dwindled to the point that the only tomorrow left was...the first day of school.

Jackie had made sure to make the day count. She had helped her dad cook a big breakfast in the morning, one they shared with much laughter over orange juice and buttery shortstacks drowned in syrup, and it had tugged at her heartstrings a bit when her dad had blotted at his watery eyes with a napkin and announced in proud disbelief as they cleared the plates away,

“My Jackie Lynn...a sophomore already!”

She had left him then with a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug goodbye before skating off to meet Janna at the mall for one last shopping session before the bell tolled for them both. The school bell, anyways.

Jackie had missed Janna a lot this past summer too, one more person eager to leave Echo Creek for the stars above.  _ For a single Star, you mean-  _ that cruel voice she was beginning to hear less and less of piped up out of nowhere as she unbuckled her helmet and shook her hair out, and Jackie tossed her head head with a little more force than necessary to knock it out.

“Hey Jackie Lynn,” Janna greeted as monotone as ever with a nod as Jackie approached, her dark eyes glinting as mischievous as a rodent’s as she asked, “I saw your neck spasm back there. Are you plagued by dark thoughts?”

Jackie had been friends with Janna long enough to be able to laugh her comments off with ease, no matter how creepy or on the nose they might have been. “Haha, not as dark as your’s, Janna.” She countered back with ease, nudging her in the ribs with a wink and a grin. If she faltered even a little bit, Janna would know. She just would.

For a moment, Janna’s expression remained unchanged, her gaze so still and intense on Jackie’s face that she was almost convinced that the beanie-clad girl had somehow actually heard her thoughts, but then the corner of her lips quirked up into a grin and she happily nudged Jackie back.

“Touché. Well...shall we go indulge in capitalism’s finest or should I just burn the place down?”

The two girls did not burn the mall down together that day, but that did not mean they spared it from any of the usual shenanigans they got into when they hung out. They made faces at the security guards and Janna even tied the shoelaces together of one she caught sleeping in his booth. They chased each other through aisles in the department store shrieking with laughter, hiding in the coat racks and slingshotting bras that were as big as bowls at each other’s heads, and then at the poor clerk who was sent to chase them down. Then when they were hungry, they swiped as many free samples as they were offered at the food court, only to throw on some of the new clothes they had bought, and with sunglasses on or their hair tucked into hats, they’d circle back again for more.

Jackie was usually much more well behaved, a lot more chill than that, but there was just something about being around Janna that made getting into trouble seem so…  _ irresistible!  _ It was similar to the thrill she felt when her and Marco had swiped the lobster from the fancy restaurant, but amplified. Like she could steal  _ all  _ of the lobsters, from every fancy restaurant in the world.

She considered this with a smile as they split a pizza on the bench outside, having effectively been kicked out of the food court once they had caught on to their scheme. 

Janna, catching sight of the gentle glow on her face, challenged with cheese dripping from the corner of her lip, “Are you smiling because we’re sophomores already, and pretty soon we’ll be graduating and then we’ll be in college and from there we’ll be trapped in an inescapable void of student debt and stress on top of the unreachable expectations placed on us to find lifelong careers that make use of our hundred thousand dollar degrees all the while finding a nice someone we can tolerate at most and don’t even really like to settle down and have an expensive marriage with and have even more expensive babies with who will attend our funerals after we die in hopes of receiving an inheritance? Is that why you’re smiling, Jackie Lynn Thomas?” She poked her hard in the shoulder for punctuation. “That’s a terrible reason to smile, you know?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Janna…” Jackie hummed, tipping her head back to stare into the sky, looking for someone she couldn’t see, wouldn’t find, in its depths. She wondered, bringing a hand up to her neck to fidget with her shell necklace, how someone so far away could still feel so close, right in her heart. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”

She realized then that tomorrow was going to be her first school year ever without Marco Diaz in it. No one to nod to, no one watching her shyly from the corner of her eye….She inhaled deeply, and smiled. “I think we’re gonna be just fine, actually.  _ I _ feel fine.”

And it was the truth. As the days passed, as the flowers began to naturally wither and die in their vase, as Jackie focused her mind on other things, other people- she really did begin to feel more at peace with what had happened between her and Marco. Even Marco himself was no longer a song stuck on a repetitive loop in her head, but rather a single scratch in a record, only the occasional stutter there to trip up her heart when she was having a good time, like right now. And like resetting the needle to the grain, Jackie took a deep breath in, and on the exhale, pushed all thoughts of him from her head and out into the sky, as easily as letting go of a balloon into the breeze, and brought herself back to the bench, to  _ right now _ .

She turned to grin at Janna, only to find her cheeks absolutely stuffed with pizza, with strings of cheese clinging to her chin and a lone pepperoni stuck to the corner of her lip and burst out laughing at the sight… until she realized that Janna hadn’t ordered pepperoni on her half of the pizza, but jalapenos. Mouth gape with sudden realization, Jackie looked down to the box between them to find her last two slices of pepperoni gone.  _ Betrayal! _

“Awww, dude! My pizza!” Jackie whined, punching Janna half-heartedly in the shoulder. “My wallet is one thing, but my  _ pizza _ , Janna?” She punched her again, and though she tried her hardest to scowl and seem angry, the smug look on Janna’s face, only made more ridiculous by the bulge in her cheeks, broke her into laughter almost immediately. “Haha! N-not...not cool-hahaha!”

And as she and Janna jostled each other back and forth on the way home, cracking jokes and musing about what the new school year would bring for the two of them, Jackie only felt more certain that everything was going to work out just fine.

She was moving on.

The postcard was on her desk when she came home from school the next day, sitting innocently right beside what remained of Marco’s bouquet. It was very bright and cheerful looking, the picture on the front boasting fluffy pastel clouds swirled high under twinkling stars ablaze in all the colors of the rainbow. It sort of reminded Jackie of the Lisa Frank folders she used to have in elementary school, with their neon pink flower-eyed dolphins and funky aliens in bell-bottom pants and sandals.

She immediately assumed it was from her mom, who lived six hours upstate and despite their nightly video chats together, would still send the occasional postcard if she thought it was to Jackie’s taste. This one certainly was, anyways.

“Thanks Mom,” Jackie hummed smiling a bit to herself… until she flipped the postcard over. Her breath caught in her throat. Her stomach did a little kickflip. Her heart stuttered to an almost complete stop before taking on a crazed tempo against her ribs. The message on the back wasn’t from her mom.

It was from Marco.

_ ‘Hey Jackie! _

_ I just got back from this one dimension that reminded me a lot of you, and wanted to tell you about it. It’s really cool looking and full of these glowing clouds, and the gravity here is kinda weird. You can jump up really fast and high up like a rocket, but then you fall back down slowly like a balloon running out of helium. It seems like it’d be a great place to skateboard, you wouldn’t even get hurt if you fell.  _ _ And it’s cool and glowing looking. _ _ Sorry, I already said that. _

_School’s about to start, huh? It’s weird not being there for it. I hope you have a_ _good_ _great_ _amazing year Jackie._

_ -Marco Diaz  _

_ P.S- _

_ I hope it isn’t weird that I wrote you. Okay, it probably is weird. I’m sorry. But...it’d be so cool to hear back from you. If you want to write me back, I included some magical stamps that’ll let you. Just stick them on and say my name. Or anyone else’s name if you (understandably) don’t want to talk to me. It’s  _ _ up to you.’ _

Marco had run out of room on the postcard, and the last of his message was written small and close together, those last three words crammed nearly atop one another in the bottom corner like blue ants swarming a crumb of cake.

Jackie stared hard at his message for a long time, her heart doing something in her chest that was both delightful and extremely painful, like it had finally nailed a difficult skate trick but landed the wrong way last second. Her hands did not tremble, but there was suddenly a small quiver in her lip, one she executed swiftly by biting down on it, hard.

Keeping herself together on deep breaths and the pressure on her bottom lip alone, she slowly swiveled her head from the postcard to the vase on her desk. Only three of the biggest flowers remained now, and only by a few petals alone, their colors bleeding from a sad fade to a bleached out white. They were brittle to the touch now as well, and Jackie had long ago stopped running her fingers over them in affection in order to spare them that extra amount of time, no matter how small.

They were barely hanging on now.

She regarded Marco’s message once more and her head suddenly felt very heavy then, on the brink of toppling off her neck with the weight of all the questions that began to swirl and crowd in her brain, clamoring over one another to be heard, to be addressed first.

_ Why did he write all of a sudden? Is it weird that he wrote me? What was he thinking? What was he feeling? How did he even get this here? Why send it at all? Does Star know about this? What does this mean? Should I write back? _

That final question pulled Jackie’s focus more and more to the cramped words that ended the postcard, the small declaration that her choice to reply was  _ ‘up to her’.  _ A single question began to boom like heavy bass against her skull, silencing all her other questions and reverberating all the way down her spine to rattle her ribcage and confuse her heart.

_ Do I want to? Do I want to? Do I want to? Do I  _ want  _ to? _

  
  


She did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is already finished in full. I'll be uploading a chapter a day until it's complete, just to have something to do. Thanks for reading and disregarding canon with me!


	3. From Me To You and Back Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making the decision to write Marco back after all, Jackie straps in for the roller coaster of emotions that comes with becoming penpals with an ex

“Woah!”

It took a lot to make someone as steel-willed as Janna Ordonia flinch, but that is exactly what she did, with a shout no less, when she saw Jackie Lynn in class the next morning.

She approached the skater girl slowly, as if she was a creature that might suddenly bite, regarding her appearance with piqued curiosity and mild disgust. “Jackie,” she began slowly, as if she was picking her words carefully, and then as if she’d been hit with the sudden realization that tip-toeing around other people’s feelings and moods had never been her style, simply deadpanned as she slid into her desk, “You look like a half-baked zombie raised by a bit-rate resurrection spell. What’s up with that, huh?”

It was true, Jackie didn’t quite look or feel quite her normal self. Her helmet hair was a bit more frizzed out than normal, and her eyes, usually as bright as a lagoon, were murky with exhaustion and ringed with purple bags packed heavy with the hours she’d been awake throughout the night with. She had at least remembered to brush her teeth that morning, which was evident by the dried white paste in the corner of her lip, and the wave of spearmint that rolled off her breath as she slowly lolled her head in her cupped palm towards her friend, and answered quite slowly,

“Oh...Yeah. What’s up Janna? What about zombies, dude?”

Janna crinkled her nose and stated again, bluntly. “You look like one. And,” she leaned over and sniffed Jackie’s shoulder, but merely blinked, sniffed again, and pulled back with a shrug. “Well, I was gonna say you smell like one too, but you don’t. So good going on that one, I guess. But for real,” she snapped her fingers into a gun and pointed directly at Jackie, to prove she wasn’t messing around. “What gives? What’s up with you, Jackie Lynn?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing, nothing! It’s all good, dude. _Chiiillll._ Just stayed up a little late doing some writing, no big deal.” Jackie waved her off dismissively with a smile that was as slow as syrup, one that opened up into a great wide yawn, just as their teacher for the new year strolled into the classroom. 

His name was Mr. Tully, and well… It was odd to have a human teacher again after having one that was a green skinned, hook-fanged troll, but he seemed like he was going to be a much more gentle instructor than Ms. Skullnik had been, though twenty times more dull as well. His voice was a slow monotone that never seemed to rise or dip with emotion during his lectures, and from behind his thick bottle glasses Jackie had hardly seen him blink. Janna had raised her hand right away to ask if he was some sort of reptile sent to infiltrate the human race, and if he was, did he want any of the dead flies on the windowsill next to her seat? That had swiftly earned her her first detention of the year.

“Hasta manana, Senor Iguana!” She had called out smugly over her shoulder as she walked out, eager to stake her favorite desk in the detention room.

He was watching her and Jackie both now as he began to organize his lesson plans on his desk, but despite his unwavering gaze Janna leaned over and asked, dubiously,

“Writing? Seriously? Since when do you write?”

Jackie shrugged, and began to shuffle her notebooks and folders in random order, almost as if in a dream. “Oh, you know,” she mused as a colorful card finally peeked its star-speckled face at her from inside her folder. “When the inspiration hits…”

She had been up all night trying to find the right words to reply to Marco with. Like trying to find the right combination of wheels and bearings for her board, Jackie tried words of all sizes, of all feelings, to see how well they rolled together, if they got her where she wanted to go, but either found herself going absolutely nowhere, with lame reponses like, ‘ _Hey Marco, cool card! I like the colors, they’re so rad and colorful, dude.’_ or crashing into a crumpled heap with more charged replies like, _‘Hey Marco, are you trying to break my heart all over again by bragging about your adventures with Star? Not cool dude!’_

She just...didn’t know what to tell him. She certainly couldn’t write to him about all the rumors swirling around Echo Creek High about him and Star, was not capable of that kind of cruelty. How would that have made Marco feel, to read something like-

_Hey, dude!_

_All everyone around school can talk about is you and Star, and what happened at the party, and why you left. Some people think you two ran off to elope. Other people, like really lame people who don’t matter, say you had to leave together because you knocked Star up and have to go raise an alien baby. Other idiots say because she’s an alien, Star might have knocked_ you _up instead. How stupid, right? Don’t listen to those jerks, Marco._

 _Then there are the people saying_ that you’re _the jerk, Marco. That you were probably cheating on me the entire time we were together, that I was only a side piece, something to distract your parents from the fact your real girlfriend was with you under their roof. They act like I can’t hear them, and I just go along with it, dude. It’s not worth the drama. I don’t make eye contact when they stare with all that pity on their face, either. That’s almost worst, you know?_

_I believe in you, dude, I always have._

_-Your rumor-ignoring ex, Jackie Lynn Thomas_

And she certainly couldn’t send him a postcard asking the more hardball questions she wanted the answers to, which would come across more as a list of accusations than a friendly reply-

_Dude, why?_

_We had a pretty clean break, didn’t we? Everything on the pier seemed so final, so complete. I didn’t even come to see you off when you left for Mewni because I thought we had the best split we could manage, you know? I gave you an out, Marco, I let you go, and I was just starting to feel fine again._

_Why did you come back?_

_-Your confused ex, Jackie Lynn Thomas_

Even her third attempt, which was usually the charm when it came to doing most other things (she landed her first ollie after three tries, had managed to sit through the first _Saw_ movie with Janna after three tries, and had finally found the courage to ask Marco to the dance after skating away and then back again in a circle three times) fell not just flat, but completely wiped out head over heels and face in the gutter flat with just how… _unchill_ it was, how sad and small it made her seem when she read it over with an embarrassed grimace on her face-

_Marco!_

_Thanks so much for writing me, dude! I’ve really missed you since you left. Everything reminds me of you, I think of you all the time. The other day I landed the smoothest pop-shove-it I’ve ever done, and I was so stoked about it I nearly pulled out my phone to call you, because I wanted to tell you about it most. And I saw a trailer the other day for a new Mackie Hand movie that’s coming out in a few months and thought of you right away, I hope you get to watch it on Mewni. And I kind of hate you because now I can’t get nachos from anywhere without thinking about how much better your’s are. I kind of hate you for leaving, even though I’m the one who let you go. I kinda hate you for not trying harder to change my mind. I kinda hate you for wearing that cape at all. But dude, I don’t hate you at all, not really._

_I just really_ really _miss you, Marco._

_-Jackie Lynn Thomas, the Earth girl you left behind_

This one filled with her such a sense of self-loathing, of humiliation, crumpling it up and tossing to the floor did not feel like punishment enough. So she shredded it into confetti, and then that confetti into an even smaller flurry of snow, and then she scattered it into the September breeze that was blowing by her window.

“Man,” she sighed, watching the little shreds of paper dance and twirl away into the night, “I wish I could do that to all my math homework…”

And then she tried again. And again. And again. Took a break to sneak a quick after midnight snack and splash her freckled face with cold water, and then she tried some more. 

It wasn’t until it was so late into the night that it was technically morning, just a few more hours until her school alarm would have begun to beep and ruin the pre-dawn peace, when Jackie had written out everything she felt like she needed to say to Marco, all the cruel things, the confused things, the suspicious and all the not cool things, and crumpled up those horrible feelings into little balls she could sink into the trash where they belonged, did Jackie finally write Marco a response she felt happy with. She was so pleased with it, she even transferred her message from the plain lined notebook paper she’d initially written it on (her new notebook for school, which was supposed to have been used for taking lesson notes, was already halfway gone by the second day) to a pretty postcard of her own. 

It was, ironically enough, a picture of the pier, a bird’s eye view of the entire boardwalk and all the rides and games it had to offer, of the surrounding sea shimmering blue and bright in the sun. The very ferris wheel she’d broken up with him in front of was easily visible in it, and with a focused squint, even the restaurant they’d pigged out at. Jackie quickly scribbled over it with a black marker last second, as a means to show she meant no harm by using this postcard in particular, a skull and crossbones over the restaurant, and hoped Marco would remember their cries of protest out towards the waves, _‘Death to fancy restaurants, freedom to the lobsters!’_

She did not change her words on the back much at all. They were simple, and kind, and above all, they were honest, without being mean or overly emotional. They were just right.

_Hey, Marco!_

_Thanks for the cool postcard, dude. Seems like an excellent place to shred for sure! If only Echo Creek had such an awesome skatepark like that. And school is totally a lot more boring without you and Star around, but hey! Learning to be a knight has got to be waaay more fun than doing math._

_I’m not gonna lie, I am kinda surprised you decided to write to me, but I’m glad too. We’re still cool, dude, and I still consider you an amazing friend Marco Diaz. Don’t forget about that, okay? And tell Star I feel the same about her, and that I say hi! (And if she wants to turn my new teacher into some kind of monster, that’d be great haha)_

_Have fun out there, dude!_

_-Jackie Lynn Thomas_

Despite having to write all of it kind of small to fit, Jackie nodded once in satisfaction after re-reading it over, and picked up one of the apparently “magical” stamps Marco had supplied. It didn’t appear to be any different from an Earth stamp, really. It was the same size, still a curvy edged square, and still tasted weird on her tongue when she licked it to adhere it to the card...it was just one of the prettier stamps Jackie had ever seen. It shone and sparkled in the light like the old holographic Pokemon cards she used to collect (her holographic Lapras card was her absolute favorite and she _still_ had it taped to her bedroom wall) and seemed to change color even when it wasn’t under the light, like an iridescent glow.

She peered closely at Marco’s vague instructions on how to use it, and still feeling perplexed and at this point absolutely exhausted, mumbled uncertainty at the stamp,

“Umm...M-marco?”

Nothing happened, so after clearing her throat, she tried again a little louder, “Marco.”

The stamp certainly gleamed a little brighter then, but...nothing had changed? _Was_ anything to supposed to even happen right away? Jackie ran a hand through her bangs, feeling a little frustrated now. “If this is some kind of a joke, Marco Diaz- _wooah dude!_ ”

The postcard was suddenly engulfed in a bright shimmer of light and color, and with a strange sound, one that kind of wavered and lilted in the air like a windchime, simply vanished out of her hands like she had never been holding on to anything at all. 

Jackie remained in her chair for a minute like that, her fingers still clutching what was no longer there, eyes blinking wide and perplexed. And then, like the ground rushing up to meet her after crashing off her board, she was hit with the full and horrible weight of her exhaustion, physically, mentally, and most of all, emotionally- and she slammed head first onto her desk with a loud snore, down for the few measly hours she had left before school.

Jackie had wondered as the rest of the school week went by, and she slowly got back into the rhythm of waking up early and classes and homework, if Marco was even going to write back at all or if the postcard had been a one time thing, a final farewell to find some sort of closure with her.

She thought about it, about Marco, as she skated to school in the deliciously crisp morning air, all throughout Mr. Tully’s slow as molasses lectures, and over the different lunches her dad still insist he pack her for lunch despite her grade and age (she would never argue with him on this one, they were delicious, afterall) and when she skating home in the afternoon heat and humidity that plagued Echo Creek even in the fall.

Jackie couldn’t help but realize, with a wry and almost tired ghost of a smile, how little had actually changed between the slow bleed of summer into fall- her thoughts still turning in the same repetitive circles.

In the time it took him to respond, one of the three remaining flowers left in the vase died completely, and with actual sadness in her heart, Jackie tossed it out with a hushed, “Later, dude…” as it crumpled in the trash. She had been close to losing hope completely then, having decided her closure idea had been the right one all along, when she came home from school on Friday excited for her first weekend off to see a new postcard on her desk, keeping the last two flowers company. Jackie, who usually put her board down with great care, almost maternally, let it clatter to the ground as she hurried over to see what he had to say.

She glimpsed at the picture on the front first, only to be confused as to what exactly she was looking at. It kinda looked like a photograph of a beach...only if a Hot Topic store had thrown up all over it. There was black sand surrounding a red sea of… what was that? Fire? Blood? and from the red spouted some kind of white beam of light. When Jackie studied the white light a little closer, she was surprised to see ghastly faces staring back at her, their eyes empty and their mouths opened wide in anguished screams.

“O...kay. Cool.” She shook her head dismissively and quickly flipped the card over, more interested in what Marco had to say than anything else.

Her teal eyes scanning over it, fingers fidgeting with her shell necklace all the while, it was obvious right away that her cheerful, laidback response had inspired much more confidence in his writing this time around, the tone not nearly as awkward or unsure as the first one had been, and that made her smile to know she had eased his nerves, brought him out of a Marco Moment even dimensions away. There was also something in his message that caught her off guard completely, and sort of muddled both her brain and her heart.

_Hello again, Jackie!_

_I’m glad you liked the card, and that you decided to write me back. So thanks for that!_

_I actually have some news. Uhh, I guess I’m not going to a knight after all? But it’s okay, because I get to be Star’s squire instead. Which means I’m more like her servant, but not really. It just means we get to hang out and do normal friend stuff all the time, you know, all the fun craziness that comes with having Star around. We actually just went to Lava Lake Beach to see the Soul Rise with a couple of other friends, that’s where this postcard is from! A bunch of souls left a-you guessed it!- lava lake to shoot into the sky and I don’t know, move on to the great beyond I guess?_

_It was definitely the weirdest place I’ve ever spent my birthday at._

_How was your first week back at school? Are you learning anything cool in History class yet? I can’t wait to hear from you again._

_-Marco Diaz_

_P.S- I couldn’t tell Star about turning your new teacher into a monster. She doesn’t need any more crazy ideas. Sorry!_

  
  


“A Soul Rise at Lava Lake Beach, huh?” Jackie repeated, flipping the card over to examine the photo once again for clarity. So that’s what she’d been looking at… Actually, it was pretty cool, and definitely seemed like something Janna would have loved to see, but…

That really wasn’t what had captured her attention. What stood out to her most, even more so than flying souls or Marco not being a knight like he had bragged about being in the short week he’d been back on Earth over the summer, were three words, and three words alone.

_‘Normal friend stuff’._

What the heck was that supposed to mean? And why...why mention it at all? Of course he and Star were _more than friends,_ that had been so obvious. That’s why Jackie had let him go in the first place. It had never been just about the cape, it was about letting Marco go so he could realize for himself what was so obvious to everyone else, even her. 

Surely he had figured that out by now, right? There was no way him and Star weren’t already together. Unless…

They were, and he was just sparing her feelings about it. Talking about that sort of thing with your ex, no matter how friendly, would be kind of weird, wouldn’t it?

Right?

“Oh, Marco,” Jackie sighed deeply up towards the ceiling with a lopsided smile, rustling her bangs with the motion, “You’re such a dork.”

And then skimming over his message again, her eyes popped wide with sudden realization. “And it was your birthday? Oh man!”

Jackie was able to write this response much easier and much quicker than her last, the idea of her writing back not even a question at all. Of course she had to write back at least one more time, it was his birthday after all! It’d be so lame of her not to. She wrote it on the closest thing she had to a birthday card, which was in fact actually a Mother’s Day card, one she’d had accidentally bought two of not realizing they’d been stuck together. 

It was pink with flowers on it, and happily exclaimed _‘Happy Mother’s Day!’_ in bright blue font. Jackie once again got to work with her black marker, and intentionally trying to be funny, merely changed it to say _‘Happy Marco’s Birthday Day!’_ , and even gave the ‘o’ in Marco a mole to match. She thought it was cute, anyways.

_Happy birthday Marco!_

_Woah dude, I had no idea your birthday was gonna sneak up like that! I would say sorry for forgetting, but honestly? I didn’t know when your birthday was at all. So sorry for both I suppose!_

_And knight, squire, it doesn’t matter Marco- you could be anything you wanted to be and be amazing at it, dude._

In the margin there, Jackie doodled a little thumb’s up to show extra support… and then she added, like she was testing his odd phrase of “normal friend stuff” with an intentionally vague sentence of her own-

_‘And no matter what you are, you know that Star’s happy to have you by her side anyways.’_

She quickly blurbed about school for a couple of lines, that yeah, the first week had been pretty chill (she still refused to acknowledge the cruel gossip, the pitiful stares she was subjected to day to day) and that in fact, she was super stoked for history class. They were beginning to go into more world history, starting with one of her favorite countries, France, and she was especially excited to get into the art renaissance aspect of it specifically. Her pen hesitated against the paper for just a minute before with a little flutter in her heart, she admitted in a quick and flustered scribble- _That’s cool you remembered that I like history, dude._

Cheeks dusty with blush, Jackie decided to end her message with a joke, to lighten things up a bit. She still wanted him to write back, after all. Chewing on her pencap to keep herself from smiling ear to ear, to smother the warmth in her chest from swelling along with it as she reread his _‘can’t wait to hear back from you’_ line over once more, she teased-

_‘I promise not to tell Janna you did something so totally up her alley without her, okay Marco? Who knows what kind of revenge she’d want to get on you then!’_

Jackie was about to sign her name and send it off when she realized that no matter how strange, or even inappropriate it was to send an ex a birthday gift, she at least wanted to send something small Marco’s way for a present. She had said so herself- they were still friends, _good_ friends, right?

“Something small, no big deal…” She hummed to herself as she quickly scanned her room for something, _anything-_ that’d make a good but not weird birthday present for Marco. Her room was cluttered with a wide variety of things, but nothing that would be the kind of gift she had in mind. 

She couldn’t send him something as big as a skateboard, though she had extra aplenty, and a package of mechanical pencils was pretty boring, wasn’t it? She considered sending him one of the seashells from her collection, but realized that might come across the wrong way, the connection between the shell and her own necklace a little too obvious.

“Oh hey, Marco! Enjoy my unwashed socks!” Jackie laughed as she scooped one of her striped tube socks from off the ground and pitched it towards her laundry hamper, where it missed to land limply over the top of her bookshelf- and that is when she found it.

She kept her incense burner over on the same shelf, and would often light a variety of scents to go with whatever mood she was in (or simply mask the smell of her own skate stink after a long day of shredding). The burner itself was small and simple, a long but skinny wooden tray for catching the ash from the sticks, and she had a few slim bags for storing the incense itself. It was a nice gift, and not too personal, and something she could buy again for herself quite easily.

It was perfect, and after tying some bagged incense to the burner with a string, finally wrapped up her letter to Marco.

_‘It's not much, but I hope you enjoy your birthday gift, dude! I included two different types of incense for you to burn- Sandalwood, to help you focus and totally nail all your squire work, and Lavender, for when it’s time for you to just chill out. I hope they help you out the way they’ve helped me._

_Happy birthday again!_

_-Jackie Lynn Thomas_

And after sealing a stamp to both the postcard and the gift, Jackie watched them disappear with the rainbow light of the stamp's magic once more, feeling more excited for Marco to get his gift than she was for the upcoming weekend.

In the vase, the second to last flower began to bend sharply under its own weight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was actually the very first scene I thought up for this fic, and for that reason alone I kind of like it best. I hope you enjoy it too!


	4. Return To Sender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With each letter traded between them, Marco and Jackie grow closer than they ever were before. At first, Jackie is totally stoked about their penpal arrangement, and Marco's letters quickly become the thing she looks forward to most each day. 
> 
> It's only when she realizes just how much they mean to her that things crumble apart between them once more...

Marco loved the incense, of course, and when he sent Jackie a letter thanking her over and over again for it, writing in an excited ramble about how great it smelled and how it really helped with keeping him out of his Marco Moments, Jackie could actually smell the sweet smoke clinging to the paper he had written on. He also mentioned another adventure him and Star had gone on recently, to some sort of pigeon kingdom, and had attached a long and pretty silver and purple feather to the letter, suggesting with uncertain confusion that maybe it’d make a good necklace or  _ hair accessory thingy _ maybe. 

Yes, postcards proving they did not have enough space for all that he wanted to say, he had sent her a real, honest to good letter, on fancy parchment with a wax seal (a Butterfly crest of course) and everything. 

“Woah, did he write this with a quill, too?” Jackie wondered as she traced her finger along the thick and beautiful paper, dazzled by the sparkle in the ink he wrote with. So this was what royalty wrote on, huh?

The thought of writing him back on simple lined notebook paper filled her with a sense of challenge, and with that thought, her board already under her feet and the world a blur around her, Jackie zoomed her way to the craft store in town and picked up actual stationary paper, the good kind that left her arms full and wallet  _ a lot  _ lighter on the way home.

She had picked out a variety of sheets that she really liked, though, ones that made the price not sting as much. Some had little blue ocean waves cresting at the bottom, with blue shells and fish in the corners. Others were different shades of ombre colors, pretty and soft as the sky at sunset. She had even found red and white paper with  _ lobsters  _ of all things printed in the background, and this was the paper she was excited to show Marco the most, and was the one she replied with first.

From September to late November with school in its full, boring daily routine and the weather generous with handing out drab rainy days, Jackie found that writing back and forth with Marco became the thing she looked forward to the most. It felt so nice, so normal, to be talking to him at all, that it hardly pained her to look at the vase where the bouquet had once flourished, and find only one lone flower remaining.

It just didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.

Maybe because they weren’t talking face to face, maybe it was the incredible distance between them, but Jackie found it was easier than ever to talk to Marco about things when it was through their letters.

She began to know more about him, and him about her, through their weekly correspondences even more than they had in their few short months together in person.

_ ‘Woah, Jackie! I didn’t know you liked scary movies so much like that! I guess that explains why you get along with someone like Janna so well…’ _

_ ‘So those ballet lessons you took as a kid really helped with your karate later on, huh Marco? That’s really cool!’ _

Jackie also found they could banter back and forth off of each other pretty well, and each time they were able to roll with the other’s joke, she felt the same satisfaction she felt whenever she landed an ollie or slid down an especially long rail without having to bail out-

_ ‘Yeah, for awhile here Mewni was being ruled by this short, ugly, little bird monster...It was bad times.’ _

_ ‘Woah! I didn’t know our president could travel to other dimensions too!’ _

_ ‘Yeah Marco, everyone at Echo Creek is still mostly the same. Except for Brittany Wong… who seems to have only gotten meaner if that’s even possible? She made some lame joke about me riding a skankboard instead of a skateboard the other day, it was so dumb, dude…’ _

_ ‘Wow Jackie, for someone with so much money like Brittany Wong, you’d think she’d be able to afford better insults…’ _

It was not lost on Jackie that Marco asked a lot about Earth when he wrote to her, despite how boring it must have been in comparison to being on another, adventure-packed planet like Mewni, to the infinite dimensions he was able to visit whenever he wanted. She was also wise to the fact that he was not the only one who left Earth as he pleased, as Janna would sometimes disappear for the weekend to join him and Star for a couple of days, as well as his parents of course.

Jackie was well aware that no matter how letters they exchanged, no matter how well they played off each other’s quips or what interesting new things they discovered or even rediscovered about the other, Mewni was a place she simply could not go.

It wasn’t really Mewni she was thinking about it, was it? It’d be more honest, more accurate, (and though she’d never say it out loud after all this time, painful) for her to just admit it was Marco’s side she could never go back to. Especially not when someone else was already there, someone who was a better fit.

Marco had never really acknowledged Jackie’s comment about Star being happy to have him, never clarified what he meant about  _ normal friend stuff _ . He spoke of her constantly in his letters, of course, her name was always sure to pop up at least once or twice, but never with...well, the kind of detail she’d expect of Marco talking about his own girlfriend.

She was convinced he was doing it for her sake, to keep the mood from getting too strange between them. Of course he wouldn’t send Jackie a long letter describing a date with Star in detail, or what kissing her was like or how happy it made him (and Jackie herself, as cool and friendly as she felt with both of them,  _ really  _ didn’t want to know anyways). 

Jackie also wondered if maybe it had something to do with the fact that whenever Marco reaccounted any of his adventures with Star, it rarely seemed to be just the two of them alone? There was always this other dude that seemed to be with him, some hot headed prince named Tom who had fire powers and horns and a recovering bad temper (Jackie could hardly believe she had seen him at Echo Creek before, a real demon prince, then remembered with Star, anything was possible) and a green haired girl named Kelly, who Marco spoke quite highly of and really seemed to like. Oh, and of course, Ponyhead. Who Jackie remembered perfectly from the summer party as being the only floating disembodied unicorn head in attendance.

Yeah, did him and Star ever even get a chance to smooch with so many friends around, with so many adventures to be had? 

Capping her pen after writing him her latest letter, Jackie admitted with a shrug of her shoulders, “Well, as long as he has time to write…”

And it was enough for her.

For awhile.

  
  


The happy spell of long letters and easy conversation between them was broken when Jackie made the mistake of re-reading the letters Marco had sent her previously.

It had been a rainy Sunday morning, so she wasn’t able to go out skate like she normally would have, and she would have called Janna to see if she wanted to go catch a movie or get some chili fries or both, but Jackie knew that she had gone to Mewni and wouldn’t be back until school the next morning, dropping right into her seat from a portal just as the bell rang. Even her own dad had left her to meet with a client for lunch and discuss the website he’d be designing for them over the week, effectively leaving her to entertain herself.

Jackie considered her PS4 for a moment, enticed by the idea of abandoning her poster clad bedroom walls for the radiated wasteland of the apocalypse, but didn’t quite feel she had the patience to sit down and fully immerse herself into a game and looked away with a roll of her eyes, which landed on her dvd shelf.

There was nothing there she really felt like rewatching, though, and she simply flopped back on her bed with phone in hand, ready to just mindlessly scroll through her social media for awhile when a rattling noise came from between her headboard and the wall, followed by the whispery rustle of papers scattering across the floor.

“What? Oh no! Oh-” Jackie flipped herself onto her stomach and lifted up her blankets to peek under the bed, and confirming what she thought the noise had been, groaned, “Ugghh! Bummer!” before crawling to the floor and getting to work collecting all of Marco’s postcards and letters. It’s not like she kept them hidden out of shame, or that she was embarrassed to be penpals with her ex-boyfriend. It was obvious with the great care she took to gather them one by one, so careful not to crease them and the little smile she gave each message before stacking them up, that she had stashed them away the way one only does with their most precious treasure, something bright and beautiful meant for their eyes alone. 

And on such a dull and bleak day, Jackie needed some of that brightness for herself, so leaning back against her bed, legs tucked comfortably beneath her, she got to reading.

It was really nice, at first. There was just something about his letters that made Jackie really happy… actually, if she was being honest with herself (which was easy to do when she was by herself) there were actually lots of things about them that made Jackie smile. She loved how Marco’s personality had a way of shining through his writing, a lot of his verbal habits appearing even in written form, so much so if Jackie really pretended, it was almost like he was actually there beside her sharing his stories, his voice as warm and soft as amber glow near her ear. 

It made her smile too, how even though none of her letters held the same excitement as his, no epic tales of monster fights and rabbit pirates and dance parties atop of clouds,he always responded to her bland letters of every day, normal life as if she was also experiencing something extraordinary.

_ Jackie, that's so awesome you got an A- on your math test! You've always been one of the smartest girls I know, but I remember math was the one thing that gave you some trouble, so you must have worked really hard to get such a great grade! You totally deserved that ice cream your Dad took you out for to celebrate with. What flavor did you get? _

_ Jackie, I cannot believe you jumped ten whole stairs on your board! That sounds so cool! And scary! And dangerous! You were wearing your helmet, of course, right? I knew you were, but you better swear to me that you were anyways so I don't break out in stress hives worrying about you!! (Trust me, they are as gross as you think they are.) _

_ Oh man, I cannot believe Echo Creek is already being invaded by college recruiters like that! Maybe they work like dinosaurs do- don't make eye contact or move a muscle and you won't end up buried in pamphlets! Still, if I'm being honest, any college would be lucky to have you attend there, Jackie! _

The number of compliments Marco directed her way in his letters did not escape Jackie's notice, of course. It's just, if she was being honest...she didn't mind them at all. In fact, she'd often find herself re-reading those lines the most, the tips of her fingers ever so gently brushing over them to feel the little spark they seemed to emit- 

_ You're funny, you're cool, you're kind, Jackie I want to know more about you and what you're doing. _

The warmth from their spark was like a soothing balm to the sting Marco had left her with at the pier- that even though he did not see her as much in a romantic light, as a girlfriend, as a _best friend_ \- he still in fact saw her in a positive one as a girl who was bright, interesting, and smart, that she wasn't less than anyone else just because she was _only a friend._

But oh man, there was one more thing Jackie loved most about Marco's letters, even more so than the compliments, or his genuine curiosity about her life, or even the little souvenirs he'd sometimes send along as a gift, and those were Marco's drawings. Or rather, his attempts at drawing.

Sometimes if a story he was relating to her was especially strange or complex, he’d put little side notes or details in the margins to help clear things up, little foot notes about how Kelly's ex boyfriend lived in her hair or that Star's great grandma Eclipsa was the true queen of Mewni,  _ minor  _ details like that.

But then there were times when he just couldn’t quite conjure the right words to describe a certain monster they’d run into, or something they'd seen, and Marco would provide her with a visual aid instead.

Marco's drawings were…well to put it simply, not great. The lines were uneven and always just a little off from where they should've been, the proportions wonky and oddly shaped, and even when drawing normal faces, Marco could never seem to get the eyes to match one another. The doodles he did of himself always made Jackie laugh especially, with his noodly limbs squashed into awkward karate poses and his mole smudged bigger than his nose beneath bulging off-kilter eyes. But Jackie loved them regardless of their quality (or lack thereof) not just because they made her laugh, but because like everything Marco tried and sometimes failed to do, she could tell the genuine effort was there and that he was probably laughing at them too, chuckling as he scribbled them to life all the way over on Mewni.

It was actually because of one of those doodles that everything came crashing down, though. Marco and Star had apparently gone to visit a dimension full of nothing but cats, and he had drawn one with big, crossed eyes and a happy drooling mouth.  _ “It was catacular!”  _ he had proclaimed, with a very small  _ “but very smelly”  _ in parentheses after. It was just so silly and cheezy, and reminded Jackie of the cat memes Marco used to send her way, honestly believing she didn't know it was him, and just then the sheer  _ Marco-ness  _ from both the memory and the drawing caused something wonderful and sparkling to ignite in Jackie's chest, like a firework exploding into a thousand awesome colors right beneath her lungs, and she laughed full and loud into the quiet of her room in unbridled joy to let them out, clutching the letter close to her heart in a hug of adoration-

Jackie froze.

A horrible realization was beginning to dawn on her, a whisper of a broadcast that floated up from the deepest, quietest part of her heart, but quickly grew into a brain rattling boom as the sound of her reverberating laughter was swallowed up by her postered walls, leaving her to hear loud and clear like they were the only words left in the world-

_ “I still really like Marco.” _

Stricken by the betrayal of her own feelings, that she'd even dare to speak them aloud, Jackie scrambled to her feet and flung the letter from her chest as if it had abruptly sprouted venomous fangs and bit her, but it was too little too late-

Watching it flutter down to the floor, Jackie could already feel the poison seeping warm and sweet throughout her body, leaving her stomach in somersault knots and heart a jumble of something both sweet and absolutely crushing.

She had fallen for Marco. 

_ Again!? _

Even with a break up, countless dimensions, and a whole other girl between them, splitting them further apart than any two people could be, Marco had still found a way to resettle back into her heart, as easily as slipping into a cozy red hoodie on a chilly morning.

“Oh no, oh no, no, no! Come on, girl, pull yourself together! Be cool about this!” Jackie pleaded with herself in a voice that was already cracking under syllables, trapping her freckled cheeks in a desperate and very much uncool slap beneath her hands. “Oh duuude, gross!”

Her palms were slick with sweat. She  _ never  _ broke a sweat! Well actually, when she was out skating in California summer heat she would sweat buckets, but to sweat over  _ a boy?  _ A boy who was in outer space somewhere right now, dating the alien princess who'd been his housemate and best friend for over a year? A boy who in their short time together as a couple, had made her laugh and have fun, feel seen and appreciated for who she actually was, and shared her first kiss with? A boy that, no matter how hard Jackie tried to convince herself, no matter how gracious or mature she attempted to be about the situation, could not have weaseled his way back into her heart...if he had never left to begin with.

Jackie stared down at the colorful postcards and unfurled letters scattered about her bedroom floor, and was not surprised as the sight took on the fisheye lens blur of tears. How easily she'd sunk herself down into this trap, really. She had overestimated her ability to be the cool and friendly but most importantly of all  _ detached _ ex-girlfriend, and underestimated just how sweet, funny, charming...god, easy to love Marco really was.

It was all so stupid. It was all so unfair. It was, it was…

Jackie let out a small, broken hiccup of a laugh, and swiped at her teary eyes just once with the heel of her palm before forcing a smile. “It's over, girl.” She reminded herself, taking a deep breath to steady her jumpy, aching chest. 

She was alone and Marco was with Star. That was the reality of it. No amount of silly postcards, or cute little trinkets, would change that. Nothing could change the fact that Jackie was just a normal Earth girl, not a princess. Her cheeks were covered with freckles and not cute pink hearts, and she read boring old history books as opposed to ones filled with incredible spells, and she had a beat up old skateboard instead of a magical wand. 

There was nothing magical about her at all.

A part of Jackie wanted to sink into the wide, yawning abyss of sadness that opened up within her just then at those thoughts. How easy it would have been, to let that grief pull her under and keep her there like undertow, to feel so lousy and jaded and jealous over something that once brought her such joy, and just sink down, down, down…

But Jackie knew how to get up after a painful slam, she could ignore the burning sting in her palms and the breathless ache in her chest, brush away the grit and blood and tears as if they'd never been there at all. This wasn't any different, all the hurt was just  _ inside  _ rather than out. She would work through this…

So getting to work was just what she did. She swiftly gathered up all the notes and stories she'd be relishing in just moments ago as if they were now nothing more than her sweaty socks, mindful not to even glance at the lines written within as she tossed them back into her treasure box.

Her hand momentarily froze on the lid, and Jackie had to remind herself with another deep, deep breath that no, no- the contents inside were absolutely  _ not _ treasure, and that this was now just a normal box. A normal box full of normal paper and cards she would never look at again, ever. Whatever she had thought this morning, whatever she had felt this morning or the morning before her and Marco's final date at the pier or every single morning since then- it just didn't matter now.

It couldn't.

A part of Jackie wanted to just slide the box back under her bed, trust herself enough to leave it alone to gather dust bunnies and shadows, desperate to believe that if it was out of sight it would surely be out her mind in no time at all- but casting a glance towards her desk, she knew she was only delaying the inevitable, lying to herself the same exact way as she'd done months ago.

Hands clenched in what she told herself were determined fists at her side, her chin tilted up as if she was simply brave and not fighting to keep her head above the deep, dark water threatening to pull her under, Jackie strode over to her study desk where she kept all her stationery and envelopes, the magical stamps Marco supplied her with, and of course, the lone remaining bouquet flower in its vase, all dry and brittle as sun-bleached bones with its single curled up petal. Jackie stared at it, hard, then reached as if she was going to pluck the flower and snap it in two, putting it out of its misery once and for all...but reached past it and began to gather all her writing materials instead. 

As she'd still need them for homework and studying, her pens and pencils were the only things left untouched. All the rest was swept into a colorful jumble in her arms. The stamps, she noticed as she hurried back over to the treas-  _ just box  _ on the floor, tickled her skin like charged magnets where they touched, the peach fuzz on her arms standing right on end.

She didn't allow herself to think much about it, though, and she didn't allow herself to think about much at all as she began to tightly wrap the box shut with board tape, trapping all of Marco's words and doodles and everything they made her feel in their cardboard coffin. She spared them no final glance, no second thought as she tucked the box under her arm and briskly headed down the stairs and out the front door to her house, completely unfazed by the cold rain splashing down upon her nose and drenching her bangs.

It was like dealing with a painful, bloody scrape after a harsh wipe out- the more she looked at the box or thought about what she was about to do- the more it would hurt.

So kept her eyes focused squarely on the prize as she hurried off her porch towards the rain swollen gutter, if a trash bin could be considered a prize at all. In the very least, it would take all of Marco's letters far away from sight, and hopefully, out of her mind.

_ And heart, too. _

Jackie quickened her pace, splashing puddles underfoot as she practically wretched the lid off of the trash bin, already full with a trash bag and ready for tomorrow's truck.

“Just throw it in and go, just throw it and go. Lid open, box in, and go!”

Jackie was practically pleading with herself at this point, and yet, even in the pouring rain, she still hesitated for one single moment. She could have used that moment to second guess her decision, or even feel some of the heartbreak she was trying so hard to ignore, but Jackie decided to give herself at least some closure with the act, as little as it actually was.

Before sinking the box and all of its contents deep into the bin, Jackie squeezed it firmly between her hands, and bid it good bye with one final, genuine wish from deep in her heart. It was a wish she could easily believe in, it was a wish she knew would come true whether she witnessed it with her own eyes or not.  
"Take good care of Marco for me, okay, Star Butterfly?"

And she finally found the strength to let the letters go, to let Marco go again for the second time in a year.

She shut her eyes tight against the drops of rain dripping from her lashes, telling herself it wasn't strange at all that the water rolling down her cheeks was so much warmer than the rain pelting her neck and empty hands, and replaced the lid on the bin as gently as she would have closed the lid of a casket.

It was then that Jackie finally allowed herself to turn and hurry back into the house, where she planned to take a hot shower and then sleep for as long as she could.

The front door was already shut firmly behind her as a vivid light began to shimmer from within the trash, and it was gone completely by the time she turned the lock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like starting a chapter super sweet and happy and ending it with a sucker punch to the heart guts, am I right?


	5. Ghosting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one can be expected to be chill all the time, even the queen of chill herself, Jackie Lynn Thomas. Between the stress of winter exams, the uncertainty of her decision to stop writing Marco back, and Janna acting creepier than she normally is, there's only so much the poor skater girl can shrug off before losing her cool.
> 
> What better time for a surprise visit from someone Jackie would never expect to see standing in her living room, right?

In the weeks that followed, Jackie willed herself to tackle life with the same determination she had felt over the summer, to not lose her head over anything that couldn’t be helped. School definitely kept her busy with the impending winter holiday and all the tests that came with it. There were notes for her to study to help her pass quizzes she had to pass to help prepare for exams she had to take- it didn’t leave a girl with a lot of time to mope. The bustle of it all sometimes threatened to pop her head like an exhausted blonde balloon, but in the very least it kept her brain from getting caught up in more painful matters-

Namely the unopened letters from Marco she had to keep throwing away.

Jackie knew how rotten it was to leave him hanging the way that she was, waiting for and wondering about a reply that’d never come. Her cheeks burned with shame every time she had to pitch another one of his letters into the bin. Her stomach would twist itself into guilty knots as she crushed each envelope down deep so she wouldn’t have to see them and be reminded of what she was doing, wouldn’t go nuts with curiosity of what kind of message awaited her inside.

She had considered writing Marco a good bye letter, of course, to end things the right way as opposed to simply ghosting him as she was now. That would’ve been her course of action with anyone else, anyways- to just lay it all out on the table and make it a nice, clean break. Honesty never had to be brutal, not really. It just had to be genuine. 

That had been her guiding force the first time she had broken up with Marco. It was his own dishonesty on the pier that day that had given her the strength to be so sincere herself. It hadn’t been easy to call him out about what it meant to her that he was still wearing his cape while on their date, and it had ripped her heart in two to call out his lie claiming that she was his best friend. 

She had been able to do it because Marco had made it abundantly clear to her that’s what he truly wanted. Even if he couldn’t recognize that for himself right then and there.

But now? With entire dimensions separating them with only months’ worth of letters to bridge the gap and nothing else?

Jackie Lynn Thomas simply didn’t have the strength to do it a second time, to repeat what she had already told him once before.

_ If you’re only doing this to make me happy, we’re both going to be miserable later on…. _

And just as she had predicted, misery had found them. It had certainly found her, at least.

It was too painful to keep in touch with him anymore, knowing that every time he finished scribbling her a message, he was right back at Star’s side as her knight in shining armor. Well, squire in a zip up red hoodie. Her best friend. Her boyfriend.

There was no way their letters meant as much to him as they did to her, not when his heart already belonged so completely to Star. Jackie couldn’t help but wonder how she could have ever been so foolish as to hope that maybe the spark in Marco’s heart would reignite the way it had in her’s during their correspondence, that it would burn even brighter than the first time they were together and maybe even last.

Because now that their whole letter exchange was over, she had to admit that a small, secret part of her heart had always hoped that’s why he’d sent her that first postcard to begin with. Not just as an olive branch of apology between friends, or a final act of closure between exes... but to serve as a map to lead them back to where they had been only just beginning. He’d never been one to just...  _ give up _ before, right?

_ That’s what I like about you, Marco. Even after a crushing defeat...You always get right back up, and hop right back on. _

“Ughhh, lame! So lame!” Jackie gritted through her teeth at the thought, face burning in humiliation as she snapped her math book shut with a loud slap. 

Why did she have to feel so guilty about hurting the person who had already hurt her so much? Even before their break up Marco had abandoned her all summer to live with Star on Mewni for crying out loud! Why was she so torn up over ignoring a few of his stupid letters to get the point across she was done with him and ready to move on for herself? Why did that thought alone hit like a direct slam off of her board? Why-

“That’s right, Jackie. We’re both stupid and that’s why we agreed to study together, remember? No need to sit there grinding your teeth into dust about it.  _ Yikes…” _

The flat drone of Janna’s voice wretched Jackie from the churning tide of her emotions, and she blinked slowly as if waking from a fitful sleep. “H-huh? Oh, right. Sorry bout that, Janna. I don’t know where my head’s at today…” She sighed deep enough to ruffle her bangs, refusing to meet her friend’s placid stare from across the table.

The girls had decided to study together over burgers during the weekend, the threat of their upcoming winter exams looming ominously on Monday. The rain typical of the season had finally subsided for a day, so they had snagged a table outside of the restaurant and away from the screaming children and beeping fryers found inside. The sun shone weakly through the cover of gray clouds that hung like spider webbing throughout the entire sky, and the air stirred cool through the trees around them. Jackie was grateful she had worn her jeans today as opposed to her shorts, and absent-mindedly picked at a loose thread protruding from a hole in the knees. Her fries sat cold, and mostly untouched in front of her. Besides her focus, she’d seemingly lost her appetite as well.

_ Can’t seem to hold onto much of anything, huh? Bummer... _

Janna had already polished off her burger, and was slowly making her way through her own fries, chewing each one slow and deliberately as she continued to stare Jackie down with unflinching interest. She didn’t say a word. Neither did Jackie.

For a while anyways.

And then a weird, peculiar noise broke the silence. At first, Jackie didn’t know what she was hearing. It was kind of breathy sounding, husky, like air hissing out of a long sealed tomb that should’ve never been opened. Something about it made her arm hair stand up on end, as if the chill in the air had managed to cut right through her dark green flannel. It was a sound that made her feel like something cold was dripping down her spine.

It was creepy enough to finally get her to lift her head up from staring into the depths of her own morose thoughts, and she’d been expecting to see Janna looking around for the source of the sound too, maybe even looking annoyed that something was trying to be creepier than she was.

But of course, nothing was creepier than Janna Ordonia.

Jackie wasn’t all too surprised that Janna herself was the source of the noise. Her eyes glinting smugly with some secret knowledge, her face stretched into a toothy sneer behind the curl of her knuckles...Janna was laughing. At her.

“Dude, w-what? What’s so funny?” Jackie asked, sitting up straighter on the bench, for some reason feeling as if she’d been caught doing something embarrassing. She dared a quick peek over her shoulder in case Janna was actually laughing at something behind her, maybe a small child had dropped their ice cream cone, or maybe a seagull had swooped down and stolen someone’s food right out of their hands (she knew firsthand how much that situation sucked) but there was nothing, no one around them at all except for an empty soda cup tumbling in the wind. She turned back around, eyebrows furrowed and nose scrunched up. “Janna, dude! Seriously! What’s up with you?!”

The increased pitch in Jackie’s voice only caused Janna to snort and duck her face into her hands entirely, muffling her laughter and hiding her face as she cracked up entirely, shoulders jumping and boots stomping beneath the table.

“Oh man!” She wheezed through her fingers, “Oh maaaan! This is too good…”

With a roll of her eyes, Jackie leaned back with her arms folded, ready to wait it out. With Janna, there was no demanding anything from her. All you could do was wait on her own wild whims to indulge you, if she even decided to. It was a waiting game Jackie had gotten very good at winning during the course of their friendship, her usually chill demeanor an equal match for Janna’s mind games, her immovable object to Janna’s unstoppable force.

That’s how it usually was, anyways. Today, with another one of Marco’s letters crumpled up and jammed into her wastebasket as of last night and a mountain of studying standing before her and winter break, Jackie had no patience to spare.

Shoulders finally slumping in surrender to her bad mood, Jackie’s hands fluttered busily as she began to gather up her trash to throw out and books to be packed up. “Hey, look...I’m sorry Janna, but I think I’m gonna dip out early today-”

“You two are so alike it makes me wanna barf. Getting all spacey and dumb when you’re moody…”

Her backpack already zipped up and halfway up her shoulder, Jackie froze at Janna’s words and remained steadfast in her seat. “Huh?”

“Oh, you know…” Janna was eyeing her with a sly smile, her chin nestled in her palm like her beanie-clad head was heavy with knowledge she couldn’t openly divulge. Not without messing with her first, anyways. “It’s just kinda funny how similar two people can look when they’re throwing a tantrum over the exact same thing, even when they’re  _ nowhere _ near each other. It’s like their voodoo dolls are being handled by the same person, just opposite hands is all.”

“A tantrum?” Jackie scoffed, tucking her teal streak of hair behind her ear with a snort. “Dude, who’s throwing a tantrum? I’m chill.” She said this with a pout that was obvious even to her own ears, and she forced herself to laugh to play it off. “Like, c’mon! I am so totally chill!”

Janna only quirked one of her dark bushy eyebrows in response, her smirk stretching wider. “Yeah, Jackie Lynn Thomas. You’re so chill I’m freezing my butt off over here just looking at you. You could be a morgue you’re so chill.”

“Listen Janna, I-” Jackie tried to retort with a snappy comeback of her own, but her frazzled brain refused to cooperate and left her stumbling over her own tongue. “You don’t even, like-” She exhaled sharply through her nose, feeling small and misunderstood and bummed out about it, and she abruptly resumed shouldering her backpack. Rising up from the table to leave before she really lost her cool, she made up the best, most believable excuse she could for both Janna and herself, “I’m just...stressed about the exam on Monday, okay? You know how bad math stresses me out, dude!”

Jackie popped her helmet on and didn’t even bother to clip it under her chin, unable to tolerate Janna’s smug stare a second longer. She let her board fall to her feet with a loud clatter, her foot catching it by the tail with a snap to steady it. “Sorry for being such a bummer today Janna, but I’m gonna head home-”

_ “Yet it has not passed- think how near, how near!” _

With one foot already balanced on the board and the other poised to kick off, Jackie froze at the abrupt shift in Janna’s tone, the sweet sing-song voice that came lilting over her shoulder. Bewildered that such a sweet voice could come out of someone as wicked as Janna, she craned her neck to stare back at her friend, who was also gathering up her own belongings from off the table. Janna refused to meet Jackie’s dumbfounded stare as she continued on blithely,

_ “And while it doth last- think how dear, how dear!” _

The familiarity of the words, how true they rang to her current predicament with her feelings for Marco, caused a hot blush to sizzle its way across Jackie’s freckles and all the way up to the tips of her pierced ears. Did Janna somehow know that she and Marco had been back in touch with one another? It was true she spent an awful lot of time on Mewni with him and Star, and she did have a penchant for swiping Marco’s personal belongings, but…. There was no way she knew about their letters, right? And it’s not like Marco was openly discussing being back in touch with his ex-girlfriend in front of his current one, right?

_...Right??? _

Jackie reached out for Janna, trying to hold her up and get the girl to explain herself for once. “Hey Janna-”

“My boy John Keats.” 

She snapped a pair of finger guns Jackie’s way as means of good-bye, the pop of her fingers echoing across the empty patio. And then without a word of explanation she turned on her heel and began to stride away, leaving Jackie confused as ever on her board. But then, like she was finally going to let Jackie in on her secret... she stopped and offered over her shoulder her voice flat and smug once more, “He knows a thing or two about that long distance relationship drama. You know…”

Jackie’s mouth fell open in mute terror, stricken that she’d been found out. Her heart began to pound hard in her chest, the sound so loud she could hear it in her own ears.  _ Oh man, Janna knows I’m in love with Marco again! Oh man, oh man, oh maaan- _

“Him in the land of the dead and me unfortunately trapped in the land of the living for at least another forty years.” She shrugged her shoulders in bored acceptance. “Hmph. What else can you do except either try to summon him to your world, or go join him yourself in his, right?”

Fidgeting on her board, Jackie tried to laugh off Janna’s way too on the nose advice by playing it off the way she did best, unfazed and cool as could be. “Haha, me? You mean  _ you  _ and John Keats, right, Janna?”

Janna offered nothing in response but an infuriatingly playful wink as she began to depart for real, leaving Jackie’s question hanging heavy and unanswered in the air between them. There had been a particular gleam in her eye as she’d turned around, the kind of knowing glint professional poker players hide with sunglasses lest they reveal their winning hand to everyone else at the table.

It made Jackie very  _ very  _ nervous to see.

She wobbled a bit on her board as she kicked off to go, the uncertainty of Janna’s advice weighing heavy on her mind and body as she zoomed on home.

  
  


“Oh, Jackie Lynn! Where have you been?” 

Her dad poked his bearded face out from the living room as soon as she was through the door, an uncharacteristic greeting for him without a doubt. He really wasn’t the kind of parent to start grilling her whenever she got home, usually either too busy tending to his garden in the backyard or designing something for work on his tablet. If he greeted her with a question at all, it was usually a warm inquiry as to how her day had been or if she was hungry.

Her talk with Janna, if that’s even what she could call the bizarre episode that occurred between them a conversation at all, had left her rattled. The feeling hadn’t dissipated in the smooth glide of her skateboard like it normally would’ve, and Jackie struggled to put on a normal, smiling face for her dad, her paranoia amped up to eleven.

_ Something weird’s going on... _

“Uhh, hey Dad? I was just out skating for a bit, you know?” She unclipped her helmet and shook her board at him with a perplexed, sideways smile. “You know, like normal? Is everything okay, Dad? I didn’t think we had any dinner plans today or I would’ve come right home. I was out with Janna, I’m sorry-”

Her dad laughed off her concern in his carefree way, shaking his head at her like he’d caught on to some joke she was trying to pull on him. “Jackie, you goof! You made plans with one friend when you already had plans with another? Your friend who's visiting from out of town is here to see you today, remember? Didja bump your head on your way to school this morning, kiddo? How could you forget such big plans like that? She came all this way just for you.”

Jackie paused from leaning her skateboard against the wall, thoroughly bewildered now. Besides Janna, she hadn’t made plans with anyone else today, let alone some unknown friend who supposedly lived out of town. Unless...she had? Was the stress really frying her brain that badly? Did heartbreak affect memory or something? Was this something she’d known before and just forgotten about too? 

“Huh? Dad, what are you talking about?”

Just then there was the sound of footfall approaching from the the living room behind her dad, the steps clunky and loud as if the person was wearing heavy boots. Jackie briefly worried if her Dad had talked this poor guest’s ear off about his gardening, or even worse, about his  _ darling little skater girl Jackie Lynn... _ when the person shyly stepped into the doorway, and the sight of who it was caused Jackie’s stressed out brain to finally short circuit and stop functioning for real.

With a nervous twitch in her heart-printed cheek, Star Butterfly slowly raised her palm in painfully awkward greeting. “Uhh…  _ hiiiii  _ Jackie Lynn Thomas…. Star Butterfly here…”

And just like that, Jackie’s day went from being weird, to wild. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate titles for this chapter include:  
> "Please Let Jackie Experience Other Emotions Besides Chiiilll"  
> or  
> "I Love Janna Ordonia So Much I Could Die"


	6. Heart To Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, Jackie Lynn Thomas and Star Butterfly have a lot of catching up to do since they last saw each other at the Diaz summer party.

To say that there was tension in the air between the two girls once they were alone in Jackie’s room wouldn’t have been the right to describe it. 

There was definitely _ something _ tangible stirring in the air between them, that much Jackie was sure of. From her perch upon her desk chair, one leg tucked up beneath her and the other planted against the floor to gently swivel herself back and forth, Jackie regarded Star from where she had plopped down upon her bed and tried to place her finger on what the feeling was exactly.

It didn’t feel aggressive, like a metal tooth trap waiting to spring shut and bite. And it’s not like they were standing toe to nose with itching fists and gritted teeth, ready to start brawling with one another at the slightest twitch of an eye. 

Just the thought was enough to get Jackie to roll her eyes. That kind of dramatic reunion was merely what was  _ expected  _ of them. Two teen girls, in love with the same boy? Well, of course they should hate each other! According to all the movies, all the teenage dramas on TV, she  _ especially  _ had the right to be angry with Star. 

_ Because of you, I got demoted from girlfriend to penpal! And now I’m not even that much anymore! You stole my boyfriend! _

Jackie couldn’t help but chuckle aloud at the thought of her saying anything so profoundly stupid, something so completely wrong.

Of course Star hadn’t stolen Marco from her. You can’t  _ steal  _ someone who willingly wants to be with you too. Marco had wanted to be with Star just as much as she wanted to be with him, if talking about his time on Mewni nonstop and secretly wearing his cape on their last date had any implications at all.

“Uhh, Jackie Lynn? What’s so funny…?”

Star’s voice, which Jackie remembered best for it’s loud volume and the way her words would excitably tumble out one right after another in an energetic rush, was uncharacteristically nervous as it floated across her bedroom, hardly even a squeak.

Blinking herself free from her thoughts, Jackie gazed back at the alien princess with a fond smile on her face, all her initial shock at Star’s sudden arrival ebbing into genuine joy about it instead. Star wasn’t her rival, not in love or anything else. 

She was her friend, and always had been. Not even for a moment did Jackie want her to think otherwise just because of what happened with Marco, and she tried to reassure her brightly, sincerely-

“I’m just so stoked to see you back in Echo Creek, Star Butterfly! It’s totally rad you took the time to stop by and see me, you know?”

She had meant it with all her heart, but Star didn’t seem convinced. She hugged her cloud-shaped purse a little tighter in her lap with a hum, her blue eyes fixed securely downcast at the tops of her boots as opposed towards Jackie herself. The bright and sunny smile she wore so often and so beautifully was gone, her mouth instead fixed into a tight and thoughtful line as she considered Jackie’s words. “Well, umm, of course.” she finally managed after a long spell of silence, her fingers squeezing and pinching the puffy fabric of her bag in an anxious rhythm. She swallowed thickly, trying to find either her courage or her voice or both. “It’s the least I could, you know... _ do,  _ after last time...You know, actually...after  _ everything.” _

Almost on reflex, Jackie began to wave her hands in dismissal, as if she could simply shoo Star’s remorse away. “Oh Star, no worries! If this is about-”

It was like the flip of a switch within Star just then, the change from squeaky mouse to roaring lion happening in a flash right before Jackie’s widened eyes.

Star leapt to her feet with a stomp of her boots, eyes no longer murky and sad but shining with hot angry tears instead. Her bag lay discarded on the bed, her hands clenched in trembling fists at her side. “No Jackie! Not _ no worries _ , not at all! How can you even forgive me so easily when you don’t even know _ what _ I’m apologizing for? It’s not just what happened at the party, Jackie. It’s...it’s everything, okay?!”

The poster-crowded walls of Jackie’s room seemed to swell to bursting with the intensity of Star’s outburst, and Jackie sat stunned and silent in its wake. Unmoving in her chair, staring up at Star, her face must have been a twin image of the one she had on her face when the princess had confessed her feelings for Marco out loud for all to hear, herself included, during the Diaz summer party earlier in the year. Star had been crying and shouting then too, and then she had disappeared off the literal face of the Earth. 

Marco had followed behind her not long after, and Jackie was left behind with nothing but all of their unrealized summer plans, all of the whispered rumors, and all of the pity filled stares from their classmates who had witnessed the drama unfold themselves.

By the time he came back, clad in his cape and a hero of Mewni, it was obvious he had changed- both in his demeanor, and in his heart. 

But Jackie had  _ never  _ blamed Star for their break up, for how Marco’s feelings had changed. Even as his best friend, heck, even as his now girlfriend, his feelings weren’t Star’s responsibility to control. 

Maybe she had opened his eyes to the possibility of them being more than just friends when she confessed to him at the party, but it was Marco himself who looked into his heart for the answer to who he truly loved best.

Jackie was well aware it hadn’t been her face he’d seen in his heart, and she had… well,  _ was… _ making peace with that fact as best she could. She didn’t want Star to feel any guilt on her behalf for something so far outside her control, not even for a second.

“Woah, Star, wait! Hey, it’s okay. Really, girl, it’s totally okay!” She rose from her chair and approached the trembling girl with her palms held up before her, like she would a fearful animal who was ready to bolt. She kept her voice warm and slow as honey dissolving into a cup of tea as she insisted patiently, “Star, dude, you have nothing to apologize for, okay? Especially not to me. I’m not angry about you and Marco, and I never have been. You can’t help how you feel, and neither can Marco.” She curled up one of her hands over her heart, offering Star a smile of understanding. “It’s like you said at your sleepover, remember? The one with the scary box? Feelings are  _ always  _ changing, and people change with them. How could I be upset with you over something like that? You don’t need to be so hard on yourself, Star, especially on my behalf. Everything between us is totally cool-”

She reached out to gently clasp Star’s shoulder, maybe even pull her into a hug, but the blonde vehemently shook her horned head and jerked back just out of her reach.

Her chest still heaving, Star continued in a voice thick with tears, “Jackie, how can you… How can you say everything’s cool when I have been nothing but uncool to all my other friends? Ever since I started to believe I liked Marco as more than one himself, I’ve become so...just so  _ selfish!  _ I’ve gotten so mean and angry, and...And I have  _ never _ cried so much before in my life! Jackie, just look at these things! I’m supposed to be the princess with fists like hammers, not the princess with-” Star poked accusing fingers towards her face and the tears that streaked there, “Eyes like stupid, leaky faucets!” She barked a laugh at her own horrible joke as she aggressively swiped at her eyes, but the sound was broken and held no mirth at all. It was enough to twist Jackie’s own heart, and she wordlessly reached out towards Star to comfort her once more.

This time she didn’t pull away, and let Jackie’s hand come to a comforting perch on her shoulder. In fact, the gentle sensation seemed to anchor her back into a somewhat more regained sense of calm, and after a deep shuddering breath, her tears began to subside into tiny little hiccups. 

Jackie took the opportunity to step even closer, and placed her other hand on Star’s opposite shoulder. “That’s it, Star. Deep breaths, okay? Just let all the bad vibes out, I got you.”

The irony of how drastically her day had turned around wasn’t lost on Jackie as she gingerly sat Star back down upon the bed, her arm wrapped behind her shoulders in a comforting hug as she settled down beside her.

She had been feeling so hurt herself lately, so lost in her own heartache that it felt like she would never figure her way out of it. But the second Star began to fall apart in front of her, crushed under the weight of her unnecessary guilt, suddenly Jackie felt that her own wasn’t so heavy a burden to bear. 

Giving Star time to settle her breathing and get the last of her sniffles out, Jackie suddenly remembered something an old wise man had said in the sequel to one of her favorite cartoons of all time-

_ “Sometimes the best way to solve your own problems is to help someone else.” _

Jackie had never understood the message more than she did right then and there, leaned up snug against her ex-boyfriend’s interdimensional girlfriend like it was the most normal situation in the world.

Because at the very core of it all, it was normal. 

Her friend was hurting and needed her support. Her forgiveness. And those were things Jackie was more than happy to provide. 

And as much as she argued against it, no matter how vehemently Jackie would deny it out loud… she felt validated to have her own heartbreak finally acknowledged. To have someone hear her repeat over and over  _ ‘No, I’m totally fine.’  _ and  _ ‘I’m cool with what happened, it’s okay’  _ and finally respond that no, her heartbreak was  _ not  _ fine, and yes, it was in fact  _ okay  _ for her to be upset too…

That alone eased much of the crushing weight off of Jackie’s broken heart.

Sniffling back tears of her own now, Jackie wrapped both her arms around Star in a warm squeeze that was meant to comfort both of them. As painful as it was to finally bring up everything that had happened between them with Marco, this was a conversation both of them had been needing to have for a long time.

The two girls sat silently like that for awhile, wrapped up in their sideways hug as they both composed themselves for the long talk that lay ahead of them.

Downstairs, Jackie could hear her father singing to himself as he cleaned up around the kitchen, undoubtedly making her and Star some kind of treat or another to surprise them with. It was a song he’d sometimes sing whenever he found the time to break out his old acoustic guitar, a sweet and cheerful tune Jackie had adored as a child. The lyrics floated up familiar and soothing on the swell of his voice, and she let her eyes slip close as she clung onto the song like she would a childhood blanket.

_ “Oh, when I wake tomorrow, I’ll bet...that you and I will walk together again. I can tell that we are going to be friends…” _

Star was the one to finally break the silence between them, and she did so with a quiet sigh as she began to speak in a voice still thin from all the crying she’d done. 

“I’m not gonna sit here and act like I  _ never  _ had a crush on Marco. I mean, I really did think I did for a while there. I believed it with all my heart, because those were the kinda warm feelings I was getting from it. But…” Star broke away from their hug to flop back onto Jackie’s bed with a frustrated sigh, her bundled up fists going limp as she splayed her arms out in defeat. She stared up into Jackie’s ceiling with knitted brows as if she didn’t like what she saw up there, but it was obvious it was her own past behavior that bothered her so. “But the more I leaned into those feelings...they stopped being so nice. Jackie, I…” she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose, before she reopened them with a look of pure remorse. “ _ I  _ stopped being nice. When it came to how I felt about him, it didn’t matter who I hurt as long as I could believe he was all mine, you know? My friends up on Mewni, my family, my boyfriend Tom...Marco himself…” She turned her head to gaze up at Jackie, a watery smile wavering on her lips. “Even you.”

Jackie opened her mouth to protest, but Star’s hand shot out and took her own in its grasp, giving it a tight squeeze.

_ Don’t,  _ that tiny gesture said. So she didn’t.

Flashing her a tiny smile of gratitude, Star continued on. “And I’m sure this is something you already know, Jackie, but...Love isn't supposed to do that to you. Not if it's real, anyways. True love inspires you to be better. It makes you want to be braver. And kinder.  _ Honest." _

Jackie’s jaw nearly fell slack as she listened to Star’s words, spoken so calmly and with such conviction. Was this really the same girl who had turned their homeroom teacher into a troll and literally crashed Brittany Wong’s party bus? Who baked the absolute worst brownies in the known universe and sometimes rode atop a talking purple cloud with a weird face?

_ Woooah. When did Star get so mature…? _

She certainly seemed wiser for her years as she explained further, "The girl I was when I thought I loved Marco? She wasn't any of those things. She wasn’t anything that I loved about myself at all. It took awhile for me to realize that. A little too long, really! But as soon as I did, I didn't want to be her anymore. The kind of girl who's selfish, and blind to how everyone else is hurting as long as she gets what, or  _ who _ , she wants. I didn't wanna be the girl who's in love with Marco Diaz anymore." Star lifted her gaze to meet Jackie's, and there was such conviction in her eyes, such a sense of self-realized clarity, that Jackie could hardly believe she was talking to the same hyperactive, whirlwind of a girl she'd gotten to know last year. 

But there was a question screaming in Jackie’s brain right then and there, one even louder than the cause of Star’s maturity. And before she could even stop to ponder if it was appropriate to even ask, Jackie heard the question falling from her own lips-

“Wait, Star...so does that mean...Did you and Marco, you know… like, break up?”

Jackie winced in instantaneous regret as Star propped herself up on her elbows in alarm, her eyebrows furrowed together tight and mouth quirked off to the side. “Umm, what?” she asked back, tilting her head in confusion far enough that her blonde hair swooshed all off to the side of her back. “Jackie, what are you talking about?”

The moment felt exactly the same to Jackie as it did whenever she knew she hadn’t built up enough momentum on her board before coming up on a rail, the immediate knowledge that she had messed up and messed up  _ big time.  _ Hissing through her teeth in red-faced shame, she desperately tried to back track and explain herself, “Oh jeez, dude. I’m so sorry Star, that came out totally wrong! I didn’t mean to assume-”

“ _Jackie._ Me and Marco never even got together like that.”

Jackie’s heart slowed to a near stop. Her brain meanwhile, stopped completely. “Huh?” She said dumbly, hearing what Star had said quite clearly but not quite understanding. “W-what?”

Star shook her head side to side, merely shrugged as if it wasn’t even that big of a revelation. “Me and Marco never dated. By the time he came back to Mewni, I had worked things out with my own ex-boyfriend, well current boyfriend now, Tom.”

That news alone was enough to stun Jackie into a near stupor, but then Star smiled brightly for the first time since she’d arrived and confessed, "And honestly, Jackie? By then Marco felt really bad about how things ended with you. He was really confused about his feelings, a lot like I was. And I know those feelings made him hurt other people too, just the way mine did. I think it took him having you, and then losing you for real to clear up all that confusion and make him realize just how much he truly loves you.”

Jackie felt her stomach flip a perfect ollie, the landing pushing all the air out of her lungs and all the blood out of her brain. She wasn’t sure how to best react to what Star had just said to her.

_ “He truly loves you…” _

_ Marco Diaz...loves...me? _

_ Do I throw up or pass out? Both? Which one first? _

It took her a few deep breaths to settle both her stomach and calm her heart, and a few minutes longer to remember how human speech worked. In that time Star watched as her face blanched first from a sickly pale to and then to a scarlet flush, and she sat up to worriedly rub her back when she began to sway unsteadily on the edge of the bed.

“Ohmigosh, Jackie!? Are you okay? Do you need...Umm, salt? Water? _ Salt water? _ What do humans usually have when they’re about to faint? It’s salt water right? Or is that just what they use to wake you up  _ after _ ? Ahhhh, I can’t remember!”

“Star, it’s okay. I’m okay.” Jackie patted her hand weakly, stitched up the best, non-queasy smile that she could manage. “You just kinda...surprised me by saying umm, what you just said there, I guess? You said Marco’s...haha, you said he loves me, Sar?”

Star didn’t seem to share in Jackie’s amusement. “Yeah, I did. What’s so weird about that, Jackie? He’s always been in love with you, since you were little chubby babies?”

Jackie didn’t understand where Star’s confusion was coming from, why she didn’t seem to understand where Jackie’s utter disbelief was coming from. She stressed, as patiently as she could for both their sakes, “Okay, look... Maybe Marco thought he  _ used  _ to be in love with me. You know, in a childhood crush you put up on a pedestal kind of way. But even if he did feel that way before, he...he definitely doesn’t anymore. And that is totally okay.” She briefly considered swearing that she herself was _ totally okay _ with that too, but she didn’t have the heart to lie to Star’s face when she was staring at her with such earnest concern. So instead she said something she knew to be absolutely true.

“There is no way Marco Diaz is in love with me. He's in love with  _ you _ , Star."

_ And like, it’s totally obvious! You having a boyfriend yourself wouldn’t just turn those feelings off like some kind of magic switch. You should understand that yourself! _

Star merely shook her head, a confident smile stretching across her face as she pulled away and began to root through her purse. "No, he's not." she insisted, “And that’s the real reason I came to see you today, Jackie Lynn Thomas. To prove it to you on his behalf!”

Jackie's heart lurched as Star pulled an all too familiar box from the depths of her bag, the sound of rustling paper and tumbling trinkets almost lost to the roar of blood pounding in her ears at the mere sight of it.

It was the box she’d stored all of Marco’s letters in, the black board tape she’d use to seal it shut snipped open. 

"Those are!" She gasped, then shook her head in persistent disbelief, her seashell necklace swaying to and fro wildly with the motion. "Hey, uhh, Star? You weren’t like, digging in my trash, right? Like, how did you...dude, where did you-"

“Your trash?! Oh my god!?  _ No _ I wasn’t going through your trash, Jackie Lynn!” Star practically shrieked, horrified at the accusation. “You should already know how I got them because  _ you  _ were the one who sent them to me yourself!”

At Jackie’s gawking, Star admitted with a sheepish huff, “Wellll, I'm guessing it was an accident, buuut," she drummed her fingers on the surface of the lid,  _ ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap.  _ "I got them all the same. At first I was really confused about it! I was like, who sent me this random box? Is there a bomb inside? And I only got _more_ confused when I opened the box up and saw all these notes meant for you! Like, why send me back all the letters and postcards Marco was so excited to send to you any time  _ anything  _ happened to him  _ at all?  _ Seriously Jackie, you have no idea how many more I had to convince him  _ not  _ to send! He wanted to write you a card any time he found a weird shell. Or if he saw anything even remotely resembling a skateboard. He wanted to sign you up for the royal Mewni library card and send the entire shelf of Mewman and Monster history all at once! You would’ve been crushed to death if those got delivered to your room while you were in it, so I actually kinda saved your life there? You’re welcome for that one!” Star paused to smile cheekily and take a breath before rambling on, 

“I figured you must have accidentally tossed the stamps into the box and said my name out loud while you were near it? Or maybe not my name, maybe you were just talking about space or something? Or like, celebrities? Anyways, one way or another your collection of Marco letters ended up with me. And Jackie, I  _ swear _ I was gonna bring them to Marco right away! But some really important stuff came up that I kinda had to deal with first- My great great great great great grandma Eclipsa was freed from her crystal prison for the first time in hundreds of years, and she was put on trial to be condemned by my mom and the Magic Council again but I talked with her in the garden myself and it turns out she’s sooo nice and not all evil and darkness like everyone said she is so I had to investigate her past to prove she’s just misunderstood and it turns out her daughter is Marco’s arch nemesis- well, not really Marco but his princess identity Princess Turdina, who you know, is pretty darn cute herself if you’ve never seen Marco with a pink dress and ponytail-”

Jackie weakly raised her hand, feeling as lost as a paper boat being tossed in the roiling sea of words pouring out of Star’s mouth ina relentless babble. “U-uhh? Hey, Star…? Those letters…? My letters?”

Tethered back to the present moment by Jackie’s confused plea, Star waved her hands in embarrassed apology. “O-oh, right! Heheheh, sorry, sorry...Just  _ sooo  _ much on my plate right now.  _ Phew!”  _ Sh clapped her palms before her nose and took a deep, calming breath before getting back on track. “So long story short...It took me a little longer to try and get these back to Marco to return to you, but when I finally did…”

Her bright blue eyes dimmed in a wave of sadness that swept over her whole face, her smile crumpling into something small and regretful. “Before I showed him I had the box, I asked him how things were going with you, Jackie. I’d been so busy with trying to help Eclipsa, and then losing my family the throne by giving up my wand, and then trying to end the history-long prejudice between Mewmans and Monsters, that I didn’t really notice how... _ weird  _ Marco had been acting as of late.”

Guilt began to churn in Jackie’s stomach at that, and she asked Star hesitantly, fearing that she already knew the answers, “Weird? Like...how? And for how long?”

Star let out a long, almost whistling breath as she thought it over, her eyes darting back and forth above her head as if she was visualizing a calendar. “Hmmm, maybe like the past few weeks, I guess? Maybe a month? He’s been, you know, kinda  _ eeehhh. _ ” She wavered her palm sideways back and forth. “Like, he’s been kinda spacey. And not to be mean, but you know, kinda dumb too. Really, just sorta... _ moody,  _ you know?”

Janna’s words from earlier echoed through Jackie’s brain like the tolling of a funeral bell.

_ “You two are so alike it makes me wanna barf. Getting all spacey and dumb when you’re moody…” _

“What’s the name you used for when Marco would get this way, Jackie? You called it something specific before the Love Sentence concert we all went to, remember?” Star’s voice barely reached Jackie over the sound of Janna’s looping in her head, and the skater girl could only nod dumbly, her face slapped into the palms of her hands in embarrassment.

“Marco Moment.” She groaned through her fingers, letting her hands drag limply from her face to plop down into her lap. She willed the image of Janna’s all-knowing gaze to fall away with them. “I called it his Marco Moments when he’d get all stuck in his bad vibes like that.”

“Oh hey, that’s right!” Star slapped a fist into her open palm, triumphant in finally remembering the lost phrase. “A Marco Moment! So obvious I couldn’t even think of it! Very clever, Jackie... But yeah, Marco’s latest Marco Moment has been more like a Marco  _ Month.  _ And I only noticed it for myself after I asked him about you, and if you had accepted his invitation yet-”

A jolt of emotion shot through Jackie’s heart as sharp and bright as lightning, and she found herself leaning forward towards Star with sudden and keen interest, ears perked right up. “Invitation? Marco sent me an invitation? To  _ what _ , exactly?”

Jackie desperately tried to rack her memory. How many envelopes had she tossed away since attempting to move on from Marco in the past month? Five? Maybe even seven? Which one hadn’t been just one of their usual letters, but an _ invitation _ of all things? And if Marco had been the one inviting her to something...didn’t that mean he wanted to see her face to face?

_ He actually wants to see me again too…? It’s...it’s not just me who feels that way…? _

Star studied Jackie closely, the realization that was slowly dawning on her face. Her own expression was clouded with regret. “So Marco was right after all…” She murmured, then carefully pushed the box from her lap to Jackie’s with a sigh.

Before she could even think about it, Jackie had snatched the box up and hugged it close to her chest, tight enough she could feel the cardboard begin to give under the pressure. But she wouldn’t let it go, not again. Not  _ ever _ . “Marco was right about what, Star?” Jackie asked, a sinking feeling in her gut telling her she already knew the answer to this question too.

“When I brought that stuff up, he got all flustered about it, and not in the usual happy, puppy dog way he gets when he normally talks about you. It was more like he was trying to use a tiny band aid to cover up getting stabbed by a giant battle sword. He...Well, he told me he hadn’t heard from you in over a month, and that you must’ve finally gotten bored of keeping in touch with him. He tried to laugh it off like it was no big deal, and he said he could hardly blame you after how things ended between you two. And of course he didn’t say it out loud, but I knew...I could just tell he was thinking it was… because of  _ me…”  _ Star paused to swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand, the rims of her eyes and the tip of her nose once again flushed the same kind of matching painful red, and Jackie felt her own heart begin to splinter into three jagged pieces right then and there.

A piece for herself, the girl left behind on Earth. A piece for the princess falling apart in front of her with self-loathing and blame. And a piece for the boy caught in the middle of them both.

“He tried to act like he was okay about it, that he accepted the situation for what it was...But I can see how much it’s hurting him, how much he misses you. I didn’t have the heart to show Marco the box and let him know that his suspicions were right. And just because he wants to sit there and pretend that everything is okay the way it is, that doesn’t mean I could. Especially when I’m the one who was lucky enough to get a second chance with the ex I’m still in love with! So I decided to come visit you myself, and apologize for everything that I did to break you and Marco apart. You have to believe me, Jackie! Even though I know me and Marco both gave you enough reasons to believe otherwise...we do  _ not  _ care about each other that way. Not after those feelings hurt us so bad...after they made us hurt the people we  _ actually _ feel that way about so bad. It’s true we’re each other’s very best friends, and I know in my heart we’ll always love each other that way. But we were only able to figure that out for ourselves because we finally realized there are people we love as you know, more than just friends... and we want to be our best selves for them. Even if it means breaking creepy thousand year old moon curses. Even if it means acknowledging you can’t just blame all your bad choices on a curse, and you have to work through all the ugly stuff bottled up in here too.” Star clenched the front of her dress, right where her heart was beating steady and strong. “For me...that person...well, half-demon, is Tom.” Speaking his name as if she had uttered a magic word, Star’s gaze softened from grief to fondness, and her cheeks flushed red not with shame but great affection for this Tom. 

Marco had mentioned him an awful lot in his letters, and now Jackie understood why. Tom hadn’t been the one third-wheeling Marco and Star like Jackie had initially thought. It had been the other way around completely.

For a moment Star was somewhere far away, maybe even back in Tom’s arms back on Mewni, but then she returned with a determined nod of her blonde head, and she reached out to clasp Jackie on the shoulder with a supportive squeeze.

She was smiling as she assured her, without a single doubt in this world or the next, “And for Marco, that’s  _ you,  _ Jackie Lynn Thomas.”

Past betrayal closed Jackie’s heart like a metal shutter to the idea, instinctively trying to keep her from suffering further grief. It was something she didn’t even realize was happening herself as she insisted red-faced and hesitant, “Oh, Star. That...that can’t be true-

“But it is! Marco sees you everywhere, Jackie Lynn Thomas. He sees you in  _ everything.  _ All he wanted to do once he got to Mewni was talk to you, but I guess Earth phones don’t connect between dimensions the way Mewni’s mirrors do. He said if he didn’t get to tell you about at least one cool thing that reminded him of you, he was going to explode! And as his best friend, I didn’t want to have to sweep up all the goop and gore that used to be Marco Diaz if that happened! So I gave him some of my magical stamps and told him to just write you a letter about it instead-”

Jackie couldn’t help but interrupt with a yelp of surprise, her eyebrows shooting up high under her bangs, “Wooah, Star, wait! Dude, what?! You were the one who gave Marco those stamps?” She didn’t even realize she had let the box tumble from her lap so that she could grab Star by the shoulders, leaning in close enough to be practically nose to nose with her as she asked almost feverishly, “ _ You’re _ the one who told Marco to start writing me letters?”

Whether Star’s face flushed due to Jackie’s sudden proximity or out of fear of how intensely she was asking these questions, Jackie couldn’t tell and she didn’t really care in that moment. She had to know  _ for sure _ that Star was telling the truth.

Star tried to shrink back, but found herself securely stuck in the skater girl’s grasp. “W-wow, Jackie. That’s uh, haha, quite the grip you got there! And y-yes? Uhhh, promise not to jump on me when I tell you this next part, Jackie...but I’m also the one who told him he should invite you to visit Mewni for a couple of days. I mean, Janna comes to visit us all the time! Why not you too? The castle has plenty of room and there’s so many fun double dates we could all go on together, me and Tom and you and Marco and…”

Star babbled on, making her case as to why it was a great idea for Jackie to come visit Mewni for herself, but Jackie found herself slipping away into her own mind, her thoughts racing nearly as fast as her heart was pounding.

All this time she had assumed so many different things that she was now being informed were wrong.

She had thought Marco had been writing to her in secret as to not make his girlfriend Star Butterfly jealous, to not make things awkward. Turns out, Star wasn’t even his girlfriend and that it had been her idea all along for Marco to try and reconnect with her. And it was Star herself that was right here trying to make amends on his behalf, practically begging Jackie to give him another chance. 

To come visit, even.

Jackie had stopped writing back to Marco because the grief she felt knowing that their letters could never mean as much to him as they did to her broke her heart. All that time she had been so secretly, so desperately hoping that their letters might somehow bring them back together. Recognizing that hope as being as shriveled and dead as the last flower she still kept in the vase on her desk had been more pain than she could bear anymore.

And here that hope was blooming again right before her, beautiful and warm and  _ real. _

Star Butterfly had been the one to bring it back to her.

Her voice slowly came fading back to Jackie’s attention, the princess apparently not realizing her audience had zoned out so completely. She had still been talking all that time. “Look Jackie, all I’m trying to say here is...Marco really wants you to come visit Mewni for a couple of days. Or even just one, if you’re not comfortable staying that long. He says he’s tired of just writing to you about all the cool stuff that reminds him of you, and that he wants you to experience them for yourself! With him. Like, side by side. Maybe even your cool hand in his sweaty, clammy Marco hand? Haha, don’t tell him I said that, okay?!  _ But euuugh- they reeeally are! _ But no matter what...it’s ultimately your call. Out of everyone, Jackie, you’re the one who has probably been hurt most by this mess. You don’t have to force yourself into doing something that’d cause you any more heartache, okay? Like I said, I know you don’t have many reasons to trust us after what happened...but it’d make me, and especially Marco, so so happy if you gave him another chance. You don’t have to give me an answer today if you want the time to think it over, okay? No matter what you decide...it’s up to you.”

_ It’s up to you.  _

Marco had ended his very first postcard to Jackie the same way. And all the time since it first appeared on her desk, all the happiness and hurt she had felt since making that first choice to write him back, had led her to this very moment. Another decision to make regarding how she felt about him, and accepting how he felt about her in turn.

_ It’s up to me...and only me. Is this really the path I want to go down again… the one that leads back to Marco? _

It was then that Jackie found herself on what she called The Moment.   
The Moment was that slice of time when she was jumping off of something big on her board, those few seconds when her skateboard was no longer under her feet, and she was suspended in the air, waiting for it to flip back up to catch her. In reality, The Moment lasted exactly that long, but to Jackie, it usually seemed to last much longer than that, as if time had slowed and the air was suddenly molasses, trapping her up high above the ground until... the breath came back to her lungs, her board was under her feet, and she was already zooming along once more.   


"So Star...You are saying for sure, like,  _ totally  _ for sure, dude," she tried to swallow all the hope bubbling up into her voice back deep down into her guts, not wanting to crash and burn from the heights that hope was already taking her to, “That Marco actually wants to see me again?”

Both girls knew right then and there what Jackie had decided to do.

Star excitedly swept up Jackie's hands in her own, her smile and eyes shining bright and honest. “Jackie Lynn Thomas, if there is one person I know best, it's Marco Diaz. And if there is one thing I especially know about Marco Diaz, is that he wants to see you again more than anyone else on Earth!” Star considered this statement for a beat and then leaned in close to whisper hastily in Jackie's pierced ear, “Uhhh, don't let his parents know about that, though, okay? Mr. Diaz would probably cry for like,  _ days!” _

The two girls shared a pointed stare of agreement before they dissolved into laughter together, knowing too well just how true the statement was.

It was a truly wonderful moment for Jackie, to be leaned up against Star cracking up as only good friends do. It was wonderful to know that’s what they really were, and always had been, despite the drama that had been expected of them.

_ Friends! Me and Star have always been cool...and I have a hunch we will for a long time yet! _

The thought warmed Jackie’s chest right up, and that heat traveled all the way up her spine and into her brain to light it up with a totally awesome idea.

“Hey Star! Umm, hey? Were you gonna be busy after you stopped by to do all this?” 

Star had begun to gather up her bag and smooth out her dress as if preparing to leave, and she paused with a look of genuine surprise on her face. “You know what... I don’t think so? Tom took Marco out for a boy’s night to try and cheer him up, so I was just gonna head on back to the castle and chill by myself after this.” A small smile crept across her face as she caught on to the same idea Jackie was hatching. “Whyyyy? What’s up, Jackie Lynn Thomas?”

Jackie shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, already getting up to grab them both some sodas from her mini fridge. In her hands she gently cradled the box, and she mused aloud as she gently set it down on her desk beside the vase with its lone, long-dead dead flower, “I was just wondering if, since you’re not too busy with your princess stuff, and don’t already have some crazy magical adventure planned with Marco…”

With a sheepish smile she tucked her hair behind her pierced ears and away from her blushing face. Maybe she was jumping the gun here, but she was so stoked to reconnect with the wonderful, wild girl that was Star Butterfly she couldn’t help but inquire hopefully, “Well, maybe if the dudes are off doing their own thing like you said... Maybe we could have another sleep over tonight? Just the two of us? We have a lot to catch up on, girl!” 

As Star gawked at her, eyes wide as saucers, Jackie was quick to rush out, her hands fluttering in every direction of her room, “We can just play normal video games instead of some crazy truth or dare box, and I can get my dad to make us some pizza nuggets if we want, and I got plenty of extra blankets too but if you don’t wanna crash here I totally get it, you must be one busy girl Star Butterfly-”

“Jackie Lynn Thomas!” 

She was silenced by Star’s hands coming down hard to squish her freckled cheeks together, by the very intense, blue-eyed stare she fixed on her with all the threat of a blade about to fall. Star let the pause swell for a solid minute, her gaze unflinching and hands unmoving, as if she was preparing to cast some horrible spell down upon Jackie’s head, before she cracked into the excited, beaming grin she was so known for. “It doesn’t matter how busy I am! This girl  _ always  _ has the time for a slumber party! Let’s get Earth girl crazy, Jackie! Bring on the snacks and games!  _ Wooo-hooo!” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing dialogue sure is tricky...So was making this chapter as Starkie-heavy as possible while still keeping this a Jarco fic XD
> 
> Decided to post the ending in one more chapter. Stay tuned for the finale, coming tomorrow! And as always, thanks for reading!


	7. Our Love Will Always Remain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie Lynn Thomas receives a final letter from Marco Diaz, and with its arrival, the promise of a brand new adventure

_Though times get rough, I know that you will always_  
_Be there for me, for all to see_  
_And I promise that I'll do the same_  
_The flowers that you gave me on the table_  
_They may wilt but_  
_Our love will always remain_

\--The Aquadolls, Our Love Will Always Remain

The morning dawned in shades of lavender purple and dusty blues, the rising sun bleeding its light through the winter sky soft and silver in hue.

Zipped up in her new black leather jacket against the chill, Jackie watched as the sky underwent its colorful metamorphosis from where she sat in her backyard’s patio, a mug of coffee steaming warm and fragrant between her hands.

“Wow,” her dad breathed from the opposite side of the table, his own face tipped back to watch the sight with her. “Incredible, isn’t it, Jackie Lynn? How quickly things can change, just like that?”

Jackie nodded in agreement, took a long and thoughtful sip from her drink before answering her dad in shared awe, “For sure, Dad. So cool!”

It wasn’t too often they got up to watch the sunrise together like this, and Jackie was grateful for the opportunity. It’d be the last little bit of time they’d get to spend together before she took off on her week-long winter break trip, after all. She didn’t want to miss him too much in the time she was away.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed her dad’s head swivel from gazing up at the sky to regard the stuffed backpack resting near her feet with a grin. “So, you got everything you need, kiddo? Clean socks? Toothbrush? You got room for your skateboard?”

Jackie playfully rolled her eyes at the last inquiry and fixed her dad with a smirk as she leaned over to unzip the bag. “Dad, come on. I _always_ have room for my skateboard.” 

And sure enough, there it was right on top of all her clean clothes and necessities, the very most important thing she could possibly take with her situated on top like a crown jewel.

“Haha, why did I even have to ask?” Mr. Thomas chuckled at the sight, then asked her while tapping a reminding finger against his forehead, _thok thok-_ “Aaaand?”

With a wink Jackie spun the bag around to reveal she had clipped her purple helmet to sway from the back loops. “Totally covered, Dad. No worries!”

“I’m your dad, Jackie Lynn,” he reminded her with a smile, reaching across the table to eclipse her hand beneath his in an affectionate pat. “Of course I’m always gonna have some worries about you. Especially considering you’re taking a trip to somewhere I’ve never even heard of before! Where does your friend live again? Meowgi? No, that wasn’t it. Toonie? No, wait-”

“Mewni, dad. Star lives in Mewni.” Jackie corrected him with a playful roll of her eyes. She had to lift her coffee mug up to her face to hide just how much she was smiling, how truly excited she was to be taking this trip today. “I’m just gonna go and kick back with her and Marco for a little bit is all. You know, just do some catching up since he, uhhh- _they_ transferred over there…”

“Marco Diaz, huh?” The name seemed to stir up fond memories for Mr. Thomas, and he leaned back into his chair with a thoughtful hum. There was a particular, knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “He was always such a good kid. Alway kept such a close eye on you for me while you were at school, you know? I hope Star will do her part to make sure he doesn’t keep _too close_ an eye on you now that you’ve grown into such a lovely, cool-leather-jacket-wearing skateboarder lady!” He winked, actually _winked_ in the lame way only a dad purposefully trying to embarrass his daughter could do, and it worked a thousand percent.

Jackie’s cheeks burst into embarrassed heat at his playful teasing, and she nearly spilled her drink as she turned on him with a mortified wail, “Daaaad! Oh my gosh, _jeeez!_ C’mon, you totally need to chill, Dad! It’s not even like that between us anymore. We’re _just friends_ …”

_But who knows what could happen down the road? It’s true what you said, Dad. It’s amazing how quickly things can change…_

It had been a week since Star had come to visit her. A week since the girls had made their peace with another, and conquered the heartache that had caused them both so much pain. 

Seven whole days since Jackie had found out Marco was still in love with her the way she was with him. 

And only five days since she’d gotten one more letter delivered to her desk in a pop of colorful light. 

This one she’d had the strength to actually open.

_Jackie,_

_I’m so glad you and Star had such a fun time with your sleep over. When she got back to Mewni, all she could talk about was the awesome night you two had and how happy she was to see you. I haven’t seen her so excited like that in a long time, and you know with Star that’s really saying something!_

_I’m actually feeling pretty excited myself. She told me you’d love to come visit Mewni over winter break and check out all the cool stuff I’ve been writing to you about all this time. And hopefully this doesn’t break any sort of special slumber party girl talk code, but she also told me that...Well, that besides finally getting to see lava beaches and giant royal libraries, you’re also happy to see me again as well._

_Jackie...I don’t want to just write down on paper how much I feel the same way about seeing you again too. It’s something I want to_ _say_ _...No, it’s something I want to_ prove _to you when you get here. Things will be different this time, I promise._

_I’ll open up a portal for you on Saturday morning. Just look for the giant swirling mass of glowing magic. It’s pretty hard to miss!_

_And speaking of missing…_

_Jackie? I understand why you stopped writing me, I really do. After what I put you through, you didn’t owe me a response to my first letter at all. You didn’t have to give me another chance to be your friend by writing back, or to become the coolest, best penpal I’ve ever had. But it means the world, actually, like all the worlds in every dimension, that you did._

_If you change your mind about seeing me in person and I don’t see you step through that portal after all...I totally get it. And not to be all over dramatic and sappy sounding, but just in case this is the last time we keep in touch, I just wanted to let you know, more than anything else…_

_That you are someone very precious to me, Jackie Lynn Thomas. You always have, and you always will be, no matter what happens._

_See you this Saturday?_

_-Marco Diaz_

She had started packing her bag for the trip as soon as she’d finished reading his letter, practically floating on air as she folded up her shirts and bundled up her socks. Her heart felt lighter than it had in months that day. And this morning, it felt like it was ripe to burst right out of her chest with how stoked she was feeling.

_Marco, dude...See you soon! I can’t wait!_

“Your friends should be here to pick you up soon, huh Jackie?”

Her dad had picked up on her exuberant energy from across the table, how her eyes were shining bright and alive even so early in the morning, the way her feet were tapping out a jaunty rhythm against the patio. He knew it had nothing to do with the coffee either.

Ever since her friend Star Butterfly had stayed the night last weekend she’d been in the most vibrant of moods, with her chin tilted up high and a newfound pep in her step. He’d even caught her singing low and sweet to herself throughout the house a few times, songs about better days and love that lasted, the corners of her mouth always upturned in the shyest of smiles.

He hadn’t seen her in such a state since she’d gone to homecoming with Marco back in the spring, and the return of his daughter’s bliss filled his heart to the brim with joy of his own. 

Whatever Star Butterfly had done for his Jackie Lynn to lift her up from the sophomore slump she’d sunk into over the summer, he was eternally grateful for it.

He only hoped that Jackie would return from her trip just as happy as she was now. 

“Oh hey! There’s my ride!”

Beaming ear to ear, Jackie began to hoist her bag onto her shoulders in an excited rush to take off on her newest adventure.

Setting down his coffee mug, Mr. Thomas rose to walk her to the front street where the Butterflies’ vehicle was surely pulling up- before toppling back into his seat with a yelp of shock.

A giant wormhole had opened up right in his backyard!

His mouth agape, Mr. Thomas looked down to peer into his coffee as if trying to remember if he’d mixed anything into it besides a few spoonfuls of sugar.

_It was sugar right? Just sugar?_

After pouring out his innocent drink into the grass, just to be on the safe side-he looked up to see his daughter not backing away from the portal like the level-headed girl she normally was, but instead heading straight towards its kaleidoscopic light, like she had every intention of actually stepping into it. 

“Jackie? Jackie Lynn?! W-what is that! Where are you going?!” He leapt up to grab her and carry her as far away from this mystery portal as he could, but she flashed him a carefree thumbs up and a smile so bright it stopped him cold in his tracks.

“It’s all good, Dad! This portal here _is_ my ride.” She explained like it was the most obvious conclusion in the world. As he continued to gawk at her in stunned silence, she explained with a sheepish chuckle, “Haha, yeeeah. When Star said she lived out of town, she meant like, _reeeeally_ out of town. She’s, uhh...not from around here? She’s, you know,” Jackie nodded her blonde head towards the vortex. “From another dimension.”

“Another dimension.” He parrotted back dumbly. It was all he could do. His arms still itched to drag her away to safety, but...He had a sinking feeling that if he did so, the only thing he'd be dragging his daughter away from was her sense of newfound happiness. 

Mr. Thomas sighed deeply, running his hand through his beard in stressed contemplation before finally returning Jackie’s thumb up with a hesitant one of his own. “Well! Ummm...okay? Okay, I guess.” He gathered Jackie up into his arms, but just for a tight good bye hug. His eyes still wide with disbelief as he peeked into the fairytale-like world that lay beyond the portal’s shimmering edges. “Wow...Can’t say I’ve uhhh-seen anything quite like that since college!” He exclaimed into her fluffy blonde hair before ruffling it playfully with his hand. Stepping back as she swatted his him away with a laugh, he didn’t take his hands from off her shoulders right away, instead worriedly searching her freckled face for reassurance.

“Jackie Lynn...you’ll be okay, right?” he asked with all the love in his heart, and all of the worry too. It’s not every day a parent lets their child take a vacation by themselves, especially to another dimension of all places. 

Jackie considered her father's question carefully. Here she was about to step foot through a swirling interdimensional portal into a world full of magic, and demons, and monsters. She had witnessed for herself the dangers that plagued Mewni the night they spilled over to Earth in a swarm of rats and evil green magic, the night of her and Marco’s first date. 

_And just like then...Marco will be there right by my side._

Jackie gave her Dad one final bear hug of her own, and reassured him brightly as she stepped away, one foot already in the portal and ready to begin her new adventure. It wasn’t one she would be taking alone.

“Everything’s going to be just fine, Dad!”

She believed this promise with her whole heart, and that gave her all the courage she needed to finally step into the light.

  
  
//////  
  


Jackie emerged from the portal with a gasp of awe, her eyes popped wide to drink in the alien world around her. The sky was the same soft pink as spun sugar, with two massive moons hanging as full and ripe as summer fruit within it. The landscape was lush with deep shadowy blue forests, and looming purple mountains, and standing tall and proud right in the horizon was what Jackie assumed was Butterfly Castle, all rounded spires and giant gems. It was all so beautiful, so unfamiliar everywhere she looked...until her gaze landed on a sight she _did_ recognize. 

“Uhh, hi Jackie! Welcome to Mewni!”

Marco Diaz and that iconic red hoodie of his. There was an obvious blush in his cheeks and a shy smile on his face. In his hands he clutched a bouquet of flowers, full of blooms she had never seen before, with petals in colors of jewels and candy and shapes that would never exist on Earth, and he offered them to her slowly.

“I, umm, I got these for you. You don’t need to take them if you don’t want them, of course! But yeah, they’re… for you.”

Jackie looked hard at the flowers being offered to her, and then slowly raised her eyes to meet Marco’s. A breeze stirred warm and soft between them, ruffling their hair and sending a few loose flower petals from the bouquet fluttering into the air.

The last time they had seen each other on the pier, the sun had been setting behind them, bringing an end to both the day and their time together as a couple. Now, Mewni’s sun had just begun to peak over the mountains in the distance, changing the air between them from cool and blue to a warm yellow. 

A new day was starting, everything lost to the dark of night returning bright and new. Jackie took a deep breath, filling her lungs with that fresh air, with the promises of a new day.

Anything was possible.

She reached for the flowers, and let her fingers rest gently over Marco’s when she did. They were warm and soft, and Jackie thought about how these were the very hands responsible for all the letters she loved so much, how carefully they must have moved across the page to write down every word she came to cherish. Feeling a surge of great affection and gratitude towards them in that moment, she squeezed them under her own tightly, trying to communicate to them silently, _‘Thank you, dudes. Thank you thank you thank you…’_

When she looked up from where their hands were clasped, Jackie found Marco looking at her with a much braver, more determined look than she'd ever seen on his face before. The nervous blush was gone, and there was a gleam in his eyes that shone into her's like a lighthouse beam cutting through a dark night at sea. They had never had much luck in reading each other's minds before, but in that moment, Jackie knew that she and Marco were on the exact same page.

_Things_ will _be different this time. I promise..._

Without a word, they both stepped just a little closer together, the distance between them the smallest it had been in months. And though it had been just the slightest shuffle of their feet, it was still a Big First Step- like a sprout bursting from the cold winter dirt under the spring sun, or that first smile someone manages to crack after a long and painful cry. They still had such a long way to go, but…. Jackie realized it was a journey they could take together. One day, one step at a time. She smiled at Marco, and she felt the same resolve in her heart that she saw in his eyes.

She believed in his promise. She believed in Marco Diaz.

“Thank you, Marco. They’re beautiful.”

And something beautiful was beginning, something new was blooming, right where the two of them stood.

Commission for New Bloom by Mike/SpinTrick on tumblr

Need some sweet Jarco jams? Check out my playlist for these loveable dorks on Spotify- [Mermaid For Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1L9Hg2bBaQTNDYDyDDQxrE?si=7sEAClg0SZCMH3a2Q0ivEQ)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our Love by the Aqauadolls was not just the inspiration for the ending chapter of this fic, but the inspiration for New Bloom in its entirety! It's a really good song and my go to Jarco anthem. You can give it a listen, along with some of my other favorite Jarco songs in the playlist I linked up above. Go ahead and give it a listen now that you've reached the end of the story 8)
> 
> To everyone who took the time to read this fic and say something kind to me each chapter, I love ya all and can't express enough what your support means to me!! And though all the love I had for SVTFOE may be dead and gone, I'll still always love my fellow outcasts sailing on the tiny paper boat that belongs to Jackie & Marco. If I don't see you in this fandom again, I'll catch ya in the next one!
> 
> Peace!

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started this fic TWO YEARS AGO as one of the prompts for Jarco week '18!, but the story got so much longer than I anticipated and like a lot of my fics, I sort of left it to die with a half-hearted "ehh, I'll finish it eventually."
> 
> "Eventually" was crushed to death under the train wreck that was season 4 of SVTFOE. It completely destroyed any love for the show that I had, along with my motivation to ever finish the fics I had written for it. I seriously don't have a shred of love left for the series at all at this point, outside of my undying love for Jackie Lynn Thomas.
> 
> I also have plenty of SPITE. For the fandom and for how poorly my fave characters and ships were treated in the show itself. Turns out spite is the BEST motivator! So here it is, my final contribution to the Star VS fandom and the tiny spot within it reserved for us Jarco shippers. 
> 
> Who needs canon, right?


End file.
